Tech in Malaysia

It’s important to tackle technology from a Malaysian perspective, this a collection of post I’ve made that focus on Malaysia and how we use (or don’t use) technology from a legal, social and economic perspective.

• Contact Tracing Apps: they’re OK.
  I thought I’d write down my thoughts on contact tracing apps, especially since a recent BFM suggested 53% of Malaysians wouldn’t download a contact tracing app due to privacy concerns. It’s important for us to address this, as I firmly believe, that contact tracing is an important weapon in our arsenal against COVID-19, and having ...
• The problem with Grab
  As a company, Grab has done enormously well for itself, and naturally will be the target of some hate. But I think there’s a deeper issue with Grab that needs addressing before it becomes an unsolvable problem.
• The Malaysian Government isn’t watching your porn habits
  Recently, there was a poorly written article in The New Straits Times, that suggested the Malaysian Police would know if you were watching porn online. Let me cut to the chase, the article is shit. The software in question, aptly named Internet Crime Against Children Child Online Protective Services (ICACCOPS) is used to detect Child Pornography, and ...
• Security Headers for Gov-TLS-Audit
  Gov-TLS-Audit got a brand new domain today. No longer is it sharing a crummy domain with sayakenahack (which is still blocked in Malaysia!), it now has a place to call it’s own. The domain cost me a whooping $18.00/yr on AWS, and involved a couple hours of registration and migration. So I felt that while migrating domains, ...
• The GREAT .my outage of 2018
  Last week, MyNic suffered a massive outage taking out any website that had a .my domain, including local banks like maybank2u.com.my and even government websites hosted on .gov.my. Here’s a great report on what happened from IANIX. I’m no DNSSEC expert, but here’s my laymen reading of what happened: .my uses DNSSEC Up to 11-Jun,.my used a DNSKEY ...
• The Malaysian Ministry of Education Data Breach
  Ok, I’ve been pretty involved in the latest data breach, so here’s my side of the story. At around 11pm last Friday, I got a query from Zurairi at The Malay Mail, asking for a second opinion on a strange email the newsdesk received from an ‘anonymous source’. The email was  regular vulnerability disclosure, but one ...
• 3 times GovTLS helped fixed government websites
  Couple months back I started GovTLSAudit. A simple service that would scan  .gov.my domains, and report on their implementation of TLS. But the service seems to have benefits above and beyond that, specifically around having a list of a government sites that we can use to cross-check against other intel sources like Shodan (which we ...
• Look ma, Open Redirect on Astro
  If you’ve come here from a link on twitter — you’d see that the address bar still says login.astro.com.my, but the site is rendering this page from my blog. If not, click this link to see what I mean. You’ll get something like this: Somehow I’ve managed to serve content from my site on an astro ...
• Here’s one thing that’s already changed post GE14
  In 2015, I was invited to a variety program on Astro to talk about cybersecurity. This was just after Malaysian Airlines (MAS) had their DNS hijacked, but I was specifically told by the producer that I could NOT talk about the MAS hack, because MAS was a government linked company, and they couldn’t talk bad about ...
• Gov TLS Audit : Architecture
  Last Month, I embarked on a new project called GovTLS Audit, a simple(ish) program that would scan 1000+ government websites to check for their TLS implementation. The code would go through a list of hostnames, and scan each host for TLS implementation details like redirection properties, certificate details, http headers, even stiching together Shodan results ...
• Gov.My TLS audit: Version 2.0
  Last week I launched a draft of the Gov.my Audit, and this week we have version 2.0 Here’s what changed: Added More Sites. We now scan a total of 1324 government websites, up from just 1180. Added Shodan Results. Results includes both the open ports and time of the Shodan scan (scary shit!) Added Site Title. Results now include ...
• Sayakenahack: Epilogue
  I keep this blog to help me think, and over the past week, the only thing I’ve been thinking about, was sayakenahack. I’ve declined a dozen interviews, partly because I was afraid to talk about it, and partly because my thoughts weren’t in the right place. I needed time to re-group, re-think, and ponder. This blog post ...
• Why does SayaKenaHack have dummy data?
  Why does sayakenahack have dummy data? If I enter “123456” and “112233445566” I still get results. I was struggling with answering this question, as some folks have used it to ‘prove’ that I was a phisher. We’ll get to that later, for now I hope to answer why these ‘fake’ IC numbers exist in the sayakenahack. Firstly, ...
• SayaKenaHack.com
  On the 19th of October, Lowyat.net reported that a user was selling the personal data of MILLIONS of Malaysians on their forum. Shortly after, the article was taken down on the request of the MCMC, only to put up again, a couple of days later. Lowyat later reported that a total of 46.2 Million phone numbers were ...
• 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 ...
• 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 ...
• Two years on, teaching coding in schools declared a success
  KLANG: Two years on, the the pilot initiative to teach coding and digital security as an SPM subject has been touted as a resounding success, and the government is mulling a move to make it compulsory by 2020. The announcement shocked parents, as out of 10,000 students who took part in the pilot program, only 10 ...
• The Internet is slow because of illegal downloads
  Let’s start with the quote that set off the rage in my heart— “You can see today that our Internet is slow. Not because it itself is slow but because a lot of people are using it,” he said The government agency chief blamed this on illegal downloads hogging Internet bandwidth here, adding that this does not ...
• This is how Pedophiles get caught
  This will easily be the most controversial blog post I ever wrote, so consider yourself warned. It’s controversial, because it touches on multiple taboos in our society, sex, child abuse and security theater. You see, there’s been a growing call for a national sex offender registry, especially in the wake of news that a British Pedophile had ...
• When bad advice comes from good people
  What happens when a government agency tasked with providing cybersecurity “guidance” and “expertise” gives you advice like “avoid uploading pictures of yourself to avoid the threat of black magic”? And then goes into damage-control claiming that it “was just a casual remark and did not represent the federal agency’s official position on the matter”,  only to follow-up with ...
• Keith’s on BFM Talking about spyware–again!!
  Today, I was on BFM talking about Hacking Team, the audio for which is below, and more comments and thoughts below that. Your browser does not support native audio, but you can download this MP3 to listen on your device.    This is my last ditch attempt to get a conversation started about the use of surveillance software by ...
• Forcing journalist to reveal sources will be bad–for the government!
  Our spanking new, hand-picked Attorney-General is proposing life imprisonment for journalist who refuse to reveal their sources. And surprisingly, my favorite Member of Parliament,Dato Azalina Othman, has supported the move, saying it was ‘high-time’ Malaysian did something. Fortunately, some calmer more rationale heads, like Dato Paul Low have criticized the A-G for his short-sighted stupidity. Putting aside ...
• Being Terrified: The price of terrorism
  Next week, I’ll be on BFM for an interview about spyware, which will be my last Hail Mary play to get a conversation started about the use of surveillance software by the Government. If a radio interview on a popular station won’t do it, nothing on my blog will possibly be able to anyway 🙂 In ...
• Netflix is setting back Piracy and Security
  Malaysian rejoiced last month when Netflix announced that they would be coming to our shores. We were all salivating over the massive amount of content we would finally have access too…except that it wasn’t so massive. Malaysia would enjoy less than 20% of what was available to Netflix users in the US or even in the UK, ...
• Medium blocked: Collateral Censorship vs. Collateral Freedom
  So the buzz around twitter is that Medium.com has been blocked by the Malaysian Authorities, and guess what? It’s true. It was expected, after all Medium is where the ‘infamous’ Clare Rewcastle Brown uploads her articles to circumvent censorship of her own site, the equally diabolical SarawakReport.org. Medium is like twitter without the character limits, and it’s ...
• Questions we need to ask about spyware
  If you believe (as I do), that the government bought spyware, then here are some pertinent questions Question 1: Do these government agencies actually have investigative powers? While the police might have the legal authority to investigate someone, does the PMO, MACC or anyone else share that authority. If a government agency has no right to investigate ...
• PMO purchases of Hacking Team software
  The Prime Ministers Department has denied (twice!) that it has ever procured surveillance software from Hacking Team. Even though hundreds of e-mails in the leaked Hacking Team archive point to it. The latest rebuttal, Datuk Azalina distanced her Ministry from other government agencies, encouraging reporters to seek official statement directly from other agencies accused of ...
• The Government doesn’t buy spyware–yea right!
  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 ...
• So you think English is the lingua-franca of Science…
  I get annoyed when parent associations insist that the Government needs to teach science and maths in English. They argue that because English is the lingua-franca of science, teaching science in English will help students learn more effectively without needing them to translate scientific terms from the vernacular. They add that teaching Science and Maths in ...
• The PM’s year end cyber-security message
  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 all Malaysians, and we need ...
• Hackers and terrorist
  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, ...
• Chip And Pin : An intro for Malaysians
  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 ...
• Internet connections speeds in Malaysia
  Not to beat a dead horse now, (you can read my previous articles here and here)but I’ll say it one last time, internet speeds aren’t exactly what we should be debating over these days. We should focus on internet penetration rates, and broadband penetration, and define these correctly. The MCMC defines broadband as anything over dial-up. ...
• How corporations lie to the technologically challenged
  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 ...
• Change WiFi password on Maxis home fiber router
  Got Maxis Fiber to your home, but want to change your WiFi passwords, then here’s how you do it. First you need to logon to your router. You can do so by opening your Web-Browser and type http://192.168.1.254 (where you’d normally type google.com), or just click here. You should either see a picture like the above, then ...
• Why we fear ‘hackers’: Dangers of Technical Illiteracy
  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 ...
• Our Communication Minister must be mistaken
  Our newly appointed Communication Minister has come out all guns blazing in directing the The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to ask social media giants such as Facebook, Google and Twitter soon to block “false information and rumours” on their platforms. That in itself is quite frustrating, but what really got me scratching my head was ...
• Understanding Anonymous from a Malaysian context
  The latest buzz in Malaysian cyberspace is the ‘threat’ from Anonymous Malaysia to launch ‘internet warfare’ on the Malaysian government, singling out our poor ol’ Prime Minister, demanding that he step down or face the consequences of Anonymous actions. The threat of internet warfare even came with a date, 29th to 30th August at 2.30pm, coinciding with ...
• TM blocking SarawakReport
  Sarawakreport, a website covering sensitive political topics in Malaysia was blocked today by the countries most prominent ISP, Telekom Malaysia (TM). Internet users using TM’s Domain Name Server (DNS) reported that the website was inaccessible, and I’ve confirmed that is an intentional block by TM. Here’s a quick primer on DNS. The internet works on this marvelous ...
• Hacking Team got Hacked, and here’s what Malaysia Bought
  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 ...
• For the FINAL time, Malaysian internet speeds are NOT slow.
  First off, apologies for the lack of content on the blog. I’ve been really busy at work these past few months, and content is slow moving. For instance, the previous post was a review of a router, that I tested for 4 weeks, and returned to the supplier more than a week ago–and the post ...
• The day the internet stood still–AGAIN!
  There was a time when the internet was young, just a little fledgling network, an academic toy used only by computer scientist to try out theoretical concepts. Contrary to popular belief the internet wasn’t created to withstand a nuclear war(although it can), instead it was created to address a very serious engineering question–how to connect together different ...
• The technological effects of SOSMA and POTA
  The new Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) in Malaysia should not be considered in isolation but rather in the context of the 6 other anti-terrorism Bills that were concurrently proposed. All of these new laws, will almost certainly come into effect, thanks to the whip system employed by the ruling party. Yet the laws violate ...
• The one reason you should oppose the TPP
  Today I attended an Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) event about the TPP. Among the panel members, included Michael Froman, the US trade representative and chief advisor to President Obama on issues of International Trade and Investment. (big shot!!) For those you don’t know, the Trans-Pacific Partnership(TPP) agreement is a trade deal between 12 countries including ...
• Should an IP address be used to Identify someone?
  Recently a court in Malaysia ruled that the newly amended evidence act could presume an IP address would uniquely identify a user of a network, and in the case of an Internet IP address, enough to tie an IP to the individual subscriber. In other words if the authorities ever found out that ‘your’ IP address was behind ...
• FireEye: Group spied on Malaysia for 10 years
  The team over at the FireEye threat intelligence published a special report(pdf) detailing an long running (and still on-going) cyber-espionage operation that has targeted multiple entities in ASEAN countries, including Malaysia. The program was reported to be running for more than a decade, and the sustained period coupled with the list of targets the program had, led FireEye to ...
• MDeC Private Meeting with ODI
  Earlier this week I attended a MDeC organized private meeting with Richard Stirling from the Open Data Institute (ODI).The ODI is an institution that hopes to promote the ‘open data’ culture, and founded by a giant of the Tech world, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, which you might remember for inventing a small little thing we call the world wide ...
• All Air Pollutant Index (API) readings in Malaysia for 2014
  I’ve stopped scrapping the API readings for Malaysia, as the MET department have stopped publishing historical readings on their website. The data has been updated to include all API readings up to 01-Sept-2015, and then from 28-Sep-2015 to 03-Oct-2015. The ‘gap’ in the dataset is because the MET department changed their webpage and removed the legacy ...
• What happened in the MAS hack. All questions answered, one question asked.
  Late in January the Malaysian Airlines website was ‘supposedly’ hacked by Lizard Squad. You  might remember Lizard Squad as the guys who ‘hacked’ the XBox and Play Station network over the Christmas holidays, and I’m using a lot of ‘quotes’ here because Lizard Squad didn’t really ‘hack’ XBox One or Playstation, they merely DDOS-ed the ...
• How to determine your Unifi router MAC ID
   Step 1: Logon to your router To logon to your router, fire up your web-browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari–even Internet Explorer will do).  In the address bar where you usually type www.google.com type http://192.168.0.1 (sometimes it’s http://192.168.1.1 ) or just click the link. Once there enter the username and password of the router. If you’re uncertain try any one ...
• Maxis Forum needs an upgrade
  Yesterday I Googled something about maxis that took me to a forum.maxis.com.my link. Unfortunately, Firefox wasn’t happy with Maxis, because I got the following screen: Firefox is the first of the mainstream browsers to end support of SSLv3, ever since Poodle was published. For those of you who aren’t keeping tabs of security issues–Poodle was a ...
• Malaysian Government Hacked Environmental website?
  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 ...
• ATM Hacks are so bloody boring
  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 ...
• MyProcurement: All government tenders in one Excel file
  I’ve updated this post on 31-Mar-2015, to incorporate the latest changes, and to provide more up to data info on the procurement database. Left everything else in tact. Happy birthday Malaysia!! Just how awesome is our country, that we celebrate an Independence Day AND a Malaysia Day, not to mention 2 New years day, (or 3 if ...
• Is Malaysia’s Broadband slow–no it isn’t.
  Recently KiniBiz did a piece on Malaysian broadband speeds, and once again the hoopla about how Malaysian broadband speeds are slow arose. Kinibiz quoted an article from Asean DNA which stated that the average broadband speed in Malaysia was just 5.5 Mbps, while Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore had speeds that were double that (or more!) The report however ...
• 3 Ways to watch Netflix from Malaysia
  Netflix is awesome. I watch it everyday, and while the selection is dated–it’s still pretty good. If you needed proof for just how good it is–32% of all internet traffic in the US, belongs to Netflix. There’s two problems though. First, it isn’t free, and cost about Rm30 month. Not really and issue since Rm30 on Netflix ...
• My Issue with WPWebHost: Bad Support
  Last weekend I had an issue with my hosting provider, WPWebHost. I switched to WPWebHost 2 years ago, and recommended them because they promised wordpress hosting at an affordable rate. Wordpress hosting is where the hosting provider would support wordpress specific features, e.g. help troubleshoot plugin and theme issues, perform nightly backups, and offer ‘higher availability’ for ...
• How many samples are enough to build the Kidex highway?
  There’s a highway they want to build from Damansara to Puchong–called Kidex, and just like any other highway before, people are understandably worried about the construction. This excerpt from the KL-Chronicle details the causes of anxiety: Kidex will be constructed over heavily built-up residential areas in Petaling Jaya and will pass very close to schools, ...
• Local broadband speeds slower than Cambodia: Why it doesn’t matter
  I drive a Prius–it’s a magnificent car, and if you think otherwise just ask me about the mileage. But when I tell people I drive a Prius, I get a sneer and look that suggest I must be a bumbling idiot, you know the one where their face wrinkles up near the nose. People ask ...
• Trust the science: Why mining pool water is safe to drink
  Do a quick experiment: 1. Fill a glass half-full with water 2. Drop a couple of ice-cubes into the glass 3. Measure the water level before the ice melts 4. Measure the water level after the ice melts Now compare the water level before and after the ice melted, and you’ll find them to be the same. So if melting ...
• Internet Censorship is an invasion of privacy
  With the on-going debacle about the Kangkung saga dying down, I thought it would be a good opportunity to write specifically about internet censorship and its implications to ordinary Malaysian citizens. As you may well know, many Malaysia Netizens reported of difficulty accessing one particular post of the BBC website that dealt with the Kangkung ...
• MH370 crashed our romanticized perception of technology
  As our thoughts and prayers remain with the passengers of flight MH370, I think that as the search enters its 3rd week, it’s a good time to reflect on just how much our perception of aviation technology has changed as a result. It’s quite important to differentiate between what REALLY happens and what we THINK happens, ...
• 10 Things you need to know about kangkung censorship
  Internet users in Malaysia were reporting issues trying to access a specific page on the BBC UK website that was a hilarious post making fun of our ‘beloved’ Prime Ministers Kangkung remarks. Apparently the issue became so bad, that users took to social media –only to find that they were not alone. In fact, so ...
• What kind of Porn do Malaysians watch
  Let’s be honest–Malaysians watch a lot of Porn. On the outside, we may espouse our ‘Asian’ values and culture, but the cold-hard data suggest we’re as horny as the Japanese. In one of my past post, I showed how we have evidence of someone using the Government internet connection to download porn. Today however, PornMD the self-proclaimed ...
• Much ado over a tweet
  In case you’ve missed it. The official twitter handle of the ETP, @etp_roadmap, recently made a serious blunder. In a tweet sent out at 1.00pm on the 6th of January, they tweeted “Former Prime Minister Najib Razak: Energy and Food Subsidies are no longer sustainable”. Now the blunder of course was the word ‘Former’ and ...
• How to prevent your Unifi account from being hacked
  OK….I made a boo boo! Actually my method of ‘hacking’ the Unifi modems has a ridiculously simple work-around. Unfortunately, when I published the findings I was absolutely convinced the workaround didn’t work–I was wrong 🙁 Details about how I was mis-lead are unimportant for now (although I will explain it later on), for now I think the ...
• How I hacked 4 Unifi accounts in under 5 minutes
  So I was wondering if I should publish this, but I guess I have to. If you’re one of the 500,000 Unifi subscribers in Malaysia, you need to know that your stock router–is completely hackable. TM has left you literally hanging by your coat-tails with a router that can be hacked as easily as pasting ...
• Why it failed: Malaysian Emergency Response Services 999 Project (MERS 999)
  As we approach the end of the year, and I have some free time to blog again, I thought I’d re-visit the Auditor Generals report for 2012, and focus specifically on that one project everyone is talking about, the MERS 999 project. This wonderful project, that cost Malaysian citizens upwards of RM800 Million, was a monumental ...
• 3 issues with the Malaysian education system
  Every other year, we receive fresh results from PISA or TIMSS, and every other year we see our children continue their slide to near insignificance on the global scale. I can’t phantom how the Education Ministry can remain so obtuse about such a catastrophe, and instead put on a façade of confidence, when there isn’t ...
• Are you embarrassed to be Malaysian?
  Am I embarrassed to be Malaysian? Nope, I can never be embarrassed to be Malaysian, this is my home country. I’m not just from Malaysia–I’m from Klang. I can however, be embarrassed about my government and the policies it seeks to implement. Like how our idea of a space program, is buying a seat on a Russian ...
• Unifi D-Link Routers are now officially completely hacked
  I’m a big fan of the D-Link DIR 615 router, I think Telekom Malaysia made a pretty good choice selecting it as the default router for Unifi accounts. To be fair, TM have made some bad choices as well, but we won’t go into that here, overall the router isn’t top notch, but it gets ...
• Open letter to Tun Dr. M on internet censorship
  Dear Tun, First and foremost, let me start by telling you that I truly admire and respect your contribution to Malaysia. I remember shaking your hand when you attended my Convocation quite some many years ago. It was quite odd to see that while you were present, you didn’t give a speech, simply because you attended ...
• Packet One ForHome Quota promotion vs. Unifi
  Petaling Jaya, (September 19, 2013) – To celebrate its 5th Anniversary, Packet One Networks (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd (P1) invites all Malaysians to keep playing without limits by launching a special unlimited quota promotion for two of its award-winning wireless home broadband plans. The ForHomeTM 99 and 149 offers a speed up to 1Mbps and 2Mbps with ...
• Best VPN for Malaysians : Privateinternetaccess
  As you’ve probably gauged from my recent bout of paranoia, I’m a bit of a security-freak. My PC at home, not only runs an original version of Windows (something rare in Malaysia), but also multiple anti-virus and anti-malware suites, not to mention using EMET for even more security and a software firewall to boot. So it ...
• My Lazada buying experience
  About a year back, I wrote about how excited I was that Lazada was finally coming to Malaysian shores, however I never really got around to buying anything from Lazada until recently. As you know, I was in the market for a new Unifi router and after some online shopping I decided to settle for ...
• Maxis agent attacking a Unifi customer?
  Just yesterday, I received a rather odd comment on my post about a Unifi downtime. It read: Those maroons and stupid who complaining customer service should work before as customer service first you bastard!!! if you in thier postion than only u know thier pain… they can give you promise u asshole but who want ...
• Asus N12 HP: The best Unifi replacement router?
  Update: 20-July-2014 Since writing this post, my 1-year old Asus router begun experiencing issues with its WiFi. My devices couldn’t connect via WiFi, although the wired-Ethernet connections were fine. I called up Asus and they confirmed that my router was still under warranty, however I tried sending it to the many service centers listed on their ...
• Hack TM Unifi: In case you’ve lost your default password
  There’s a lot of documentation online on how to hack your neighbours Wi-Fi, but sometimes you need to hack your own system. Usually its because you’ve change your router password and forgot it completely, leaving you in the cold desolate place we like to call “No router land”. Don’t fear though, its actually pretty darn easy ...
• Using Captchas on cybertroopers and botnets
  Last week I wrote about the ‘rigged’ EDGE poll, that the EDGE had to eventually take down because they suspected someone was trying to bias the results. It was later revealed that a handful of IP addresses were responsible fro the bulk of the votes–presumably the fake ones. An IP address defines a unique internet ...
• The Security Offences Bill 2012 -Technology Perspective
  The Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 and it’s new amendment. that wonderful piece of legislation meant to repeal the archaic and ‘draconian’ ISA may turn out to be even more archaic and draconian than the ISA it was meant to replace. While much of the legal fanfare has been focusing on the detention without trial sections of ...
• Fair Usage Policy: Data caps and Torrent filters
  This article is really more a continuation from yesterdays piece about how unfair the Fair usage policies in Malaysia are. In my view telcos complaining about 15% of customers using 70% of their traffic is just ludicrous behaviour–it’s the cost of doing business. This is akin to a restaurant owner offering a buffet and then ...
• Maxis and TM Fair Usage Policies : Are they fair?
  Every six months, the great people over at Sandvine release their Global Internet Phenomenon report, which seeks to make sense of global internet traffic across the different regions of the world, and every six months I learn a lot from just gleaning through it. For instance most of the traffic in the US continues to ...
• How secure are the webpages of Malaysian Banks and Telco
  I’ve almost been fascinated by the fact, that our money in the bank these days are secured not by steel doors or armed guards, but rather by cryptography and the encryption keys that enable them. To put it in the simplest form  your money in the bank is protected by a number–that’s what an encryption ...
• Security Offences Bill vs. Universal declaration of Human Rights
  This is what Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. This is what security offences bill ...
• Can you out-tech the government?
  Over the past years we’ve seen a recurrent theme where Government agencies were attempting to curtail internet freedom in the name of ‘keeping the peace’. From Saudi telcos threatening security experts to help them hijack tweets to governments procuring tools like Finspy to spy on their citizens–usually without any warrant or legal oversight. We’ve seen ...
• Should we learn from China?
  I’m truly anxious at the recent rhetoric about ‘regulating’ of the internet, and fear the worst. I grew up with the internet and like to think we made a journey together, from my high school days where dial-up internet was the norm, to the blazing fast broadband I have now–things have change a lot for ...
• Maxis blocks Torrent traffic
  There’s a really cool tool called glasnost, that can easily detect if your ISP is throttling certain traffic through its servers. It works amazingly well at detecting if your ISP is blocking that most sacred of all internet traffic–BitTorrent. So running two test, one over my Unifi connection, and one more tethered over my Galaxy S3 ...
• The Malaysian cybertrooper phenomenon or is it Botnet?
  The Edge recently held a political poll on whether Anwar Ibrahim should quit as the Opposition leader–But when the editor begun to see that the one-week survey attracted 12,736 responses and the responses were overwhelmingly one-sided, she smelt something fishy. Upon further checking with the IT team, they found that 6,354 of the responses came from one ...
• DAP lodges report with MCMC over blocked sites
  Two days ago, the Democratic Action Party (DAP) lodge a report to the MCMC on an ‘internet blockade’ targeting DAP related political websites that was allegedly being carried out by Telekom Malaysia (TM). As you may know TM is the largest ISP in Malaysia, and if TM suddenly blocks a website–a large chunk of the Malaysian public ...
• Meet your new Ministers of Communication and Multimedia
  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 ...
• Freedom vs. Security : Papagomo arrested
  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 ...
• Top 4 ways to access blocked sites
  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 ...
• Censoring and spying–Malaysian Style
  In 2 days time, the South-East Asian nation of Malaysia will go through its 13th 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 ...
• Kerajaan Malaysian Mengintip Rakyat Malaysia sendiri
  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 ...
• I’m Sorry, the Malaysian Government IS spying on you
  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 ...
• Telekom Malaysia is censoring the internet prior to GE13
  I’m not a usual fearmonger, or a person who panics easily–yet you friendly local tech evangelist has a warning for Malaysian users out there. Unifi is censoring the internet in the run up to the hotly contested GE1–and that’s what the data suggest. You heard that right folks, some of you suspected all along, and I ...
• Political parties don’t know how to engage
  “There are many ways to reach out to the public, both political parties have a lot of space in Malaysia… It is unlikely we will have a debate, we need to engage with the people, the opposition will engage with people,” – Caretaker Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Najib Razak Caretake Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Najib Razak ...
• Malaysia Data Center aspirations
  A bernama report a couple of days ago mentioned that Malaysia was ‘well-positioned’ to be a world class preferred hub for data centers: KUALA LUMPUR, April 18 (Bernama) — Malaysia is well-positioned to be a world-class preferred hub as a data center thanks largely to the government’s liberal investment policies, solid infrastructure and a large supply ...
• Why is Malaysia trailing Singapore, Taiwan, Korea
  A lot of people ask why Malaysian has fallen behind countries like Korea, Taiwan or Singapore in terms of our economic development. The answer most politicians give is corruption–but there’s hardly any data to suggest that’s a big issue–at most corruption can account for the ‘loss of income’. There’s no guarantee that the money we ...
• Malaysiakini twitter account hacked
  Sorry for inconvenience! let us manage your twitter account from now on,Untuk semua , For All, Wei Ren Ren, Ellowrukkum – SarkasSiber — malaysiakini.com (@malaysiakini) April 27, 2013   In what appears to be an escalating amount of cyber-attacks on the online web portal, Malaysiakini reported that they’re twitter account has been hacked by a group calling itself ...
• F-Secure hackathon result
  F-Secure recently had a Hackathon in Malaysia, with the grand prize being a dinner with Miko Hyppönen. Miko is sort of like the Mick Jagger of Computer Security, Miko also  made international news in 2011, when he tracked down and visited the authors of the first PC virus in history, Brain.A. Hyppönen produced a documentary of the event. ...
• Government Network used to download porn : Privacy is dead
  Just how private are your searches…turns out they aren’t private at all. The wonderful people at Torrentfreak did an amazing piece of investigative journalism today. Upset over the passing of CISPA, they decided to do an internet check on how active the House of Representatives were–on bit torrent. It turns out with a couple of IP ...
• Pitchin.my Crowdfunding success in Teach a Child to Read
  A couple of months back, I wrote a short post about a Malaysian project that was successfully funded on kickstarter. Today, I can proudly say that Malaysians continue to surprise me in untold ways. Pitchin.my is the Malaysian kickstarter, and recently it saw a successful funding of a project on it’s website–that literally brought tears to ...
• Datuk Maglin Dennis D’cruz in Klang : The non-updating Minister
  So it’s official. Datuk Maglin D’Cruz will compete in N.48 Kota Alam Shah in Klang. Sadly this is true. I never liked Datuk Maglin, he’s the Deputy Information Communications and Culture Minister that was looking at ways to ‘control’ social media. I won’t go much further as to why this is a bad idea–but it just ...
• Maxis announces LTE support for iPhone 5
  Maxis announced that their network now supports LTE on the iPhone 5, which is a bit strange to me. Initially the MCMC announced that the telcos awarded the LTE frequencies were given band 7 of the spectrum–which wasn’t compatible with the iPhone 5. However, something must have changed, SoyaCincau recently reported that: …Back then, LTE in Malaysia ...
• Anwar may have changed Malaysia, but Mark, Larry and Sergey changed the world
  If Pakatan win the next election, I would recommend that they award the title of Tan Sri or at least Dato’ to the following: Larry Page and Sergey Brin: Co-founders of Google, who own both the video sharing site Youtube, and the blogging service Blogger.com. Without these two free services the message from the opposition would not ...
• Malaysiakini goes free from 17th April for GE13
  Got a note from Malaysiakini today, for all you stingy-porkers out there who read all the malaysiakini news reposted by various parties, but never really paid for the subscription–here’s some good news. Malaysiakini will go free from 17th April onwards, to pave the way for MORE adverts (like we didn’t have enough) but also to allow ...
• My BN Spam SMS collection
        In the past 6 months, I’ve received more than 20 political SPAM sms’ from the Barisan Nasional Yakini BN campaign, various political surveys and two from my local MP from PAS (Dr. Siti Mariah Mahmud). Now obviously, I’m expecting the spam rate to increase exponentially as we approach GE13, and to me that’s really bad news. ...
• How many FAKE followers does Najib have on twitter?
  A Social Media Analytics firm recently reported that nearly 50% of Justin Bieber followers on Twitter–were fake. This meant that nearly 18 million followers on Justins twitter account either belonged to no ‘real’ person or belonged to a spam account–and that dear readers is a lot of spam! That’s like a newspaper saying its circulation was ...
• Malaysian Scientist don’t believe in Evolution?
  Previously I wrote about a great report from MASTIC that surveyed the perception of the Malaysian public regarding Science and Technology. What I failed to mention or rather what I ‘chose’ not to mention at the time was a specific portion of the report that dealt with the Theory of Evolution, and the reason why ...
• Malaysian Public Opinion of Science and Technology
  I recently discovered a really good study conducted by the MASTIC in Malaysia to determine Public Awareness of Science in Malaysia. The study was conducted every 2 years from 1998 till 2008, which gives us 5 really great data sets to determine not just the public awareness of science in a particular year–but also how ...
• Malaysian Education System : Seriously flawed GTP report
  In conjuction with the release of the Government Transformation Project Annual report, the Star today reported: The Malaysian education system is on track to becoming among the world’s best as stringent monitoring is in place to ensure its success under the Government Transformation Plan (GTP). “The rate of improvement of the system in the last 15 years ...
• MCMC screw up press release
  So after the furore over the Malaysian Insider article that wrongly accused the Government of using spyware on its citizens, the MCMC rightly issued a press statement denouncing the article. Unfortunately, even the MCMC has to do some reading up a bit before it post up press releases. According to the MCMC press release which you ...
• Malaysian Cyberwar: Is it an external war or is it civil
  A really piece written by Asohan Aryaduray on DigitalNewsAsia some time back talked about how the CyberWar between Malaysia and the Philippines was going on, and how he wanted government agencies to step up the security of our digital assets (or at least start the discussion). Asohan claims that Malaysia perhaps has “the most number of government ...
• Malaysian government using spyware against citizens? No, not really.
  I’ve been pretty busy the past few months, and my post count has been pretty low, and although I just returned from a 2 week trip abroad and am now flushed full of work, I decided to burn a bit of the midnight oil today because the Malaysian Insider completely pissed me off. It all started ...
• Is the MCMC going to ‘monitor and control’ or is it going to ‘censor’
  A week ago, I wrote about the MCMC was planning to ‘monitor and control’ the internet, but just today I looked at my RSS subscription and notice that the Malay version of the press release used completely different words. While the English version of the Press release used words like ‘monitor and control’, the Bahasa version ...
• MCMC looking to ‘control’ social media at GE13: A worrying trend
  Bernama (an official government news channel) yesterday reported that the MCMC is “looking at suitable methods to monitor and control the use of social media in the 13th General Election (GE13)“. Deputy Information Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Maglin Dennis D’Cruz said this was “to ensure that the social media would not be abused by irresponsible ...
• code.org : All kids should learn to code
  Should we teach our kids to code? At the moment coding and programming are not part of the Malaysian school curriculum. Probably about time we change that.
• Malaysian parents don’t want Kids to do science
  This is so true. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is probably the most famous astrophysicist  on the planet, and of late he’s been the face of science education in America. He’s got the coolness of Jay-Z mixed with the lovability of Bill Cosby and the intelligence of Carl Sagan all rolled into one. He’s been promoting science in America a ...
• PSY Penang: Are you ready for BN audio analysis
  Are you ready for PSY? or are you ready for some PYSICS? Well, that’s too nerdy even for me. The reality is that if you want to know whether penang-ites said a big ‘NO’ or ‘YES’ when Najib asked them if they were ready for BN? The answer doesn’t lie with political blogs or with the ...
• Are Free Public WiFi initiatives safe? Or do they pose a Health Risk?
  Techdirt recently reported on how Canadian Schools are Banning WiFi based on bad science, and I was appalled by the complete lack of science we have operating in the minds of these clueless parents. No doubt they’re well-intentioned but their complete and utter disregard of the scientific evidence in favour of fearful knee-jerk reactions are ...
• LGBT Movies Ban in Malaysia
  This is a bit of old and stale news, but in April of 2012, the Information Ministry released a ‘directive’ to ban all movies or films that featured gay characters. In their defence, the Ministry did later clarify that their facebook post wasn’t a directive, but a topic for debate. Of course, there can’t be ...
• Undersea Cables in Malaysia : The Need for infrastructure
  A good friend and regular reader (or so I hope) of this blog sent me this link last week. It’s a really nifty chart of all the undersea cables in the world. Now, for those who don’t know what undersea cables are, they’re basically the huge data cables that carry around the data we use ...
• Samsung ATIV Smart PC
  Alright, so my first sponsored post. Although it’s not much, somebody gotta pay the bills, and as long as that somebody isn’t me — that’s awesome.Technically this isn’t my first sponsored post, I wrote a post some time back about Unotelly, but this is the first time I’m getting paid real, actual, hard-cold cash. So what’s ...
• Is America Building the Death Star — Not really
  The White House has a “We the People” website where any member of the US public can submit a petition.If the number of people supporting the petition exceeds 25,000 then the White House will at the very least respond. While for the most part, the petitions are boring and politically slanted — the coolest and most ...
• Customer Complaints on Malaysian Telcos — Disconnected Foreigner
  A couple of days ago, a reader of the blog wrote a rather long comment on a post I wrote about writing to TM’s CEO to restore my Unifi service. The comment detailed out a long horrific story of a foreigner in Malaysia trying to get decent broadband. I felt the story was to compelling ...
• MACC says Facebook at work is Corruption
  According to last weeks Star, MACC deputy chief commissioner Datuk Sutinah Sutan was reported to have said that Civil servants and staff of government-linked companies (GLCs) surfing social media or engaging in personal matters during working hours may be categorized as having committed corruption!! The underlying logic to the argument seems plausible enough, Datuk Sutinah goes on to elaborate that: “For instance, ...
• Are TNBs new electric meters rigged to charge higher
  There’s been a huge controversy over the newly installed digital Electric meters by TNB, with consumers from all walks of life raising hell over their the perceived rise of their utility bills ever since they’ve installed thenew meters. USJ State assemblywomen Hannah Yeoh blogged about her response to this, urging TNB to explain the price ...
• And your Default Unifi Password is…
  Many folks seem to be stuck with their Unifi Passwords. It’s actually quite simple. For the most part, most Shops and Restaurants that provide Free Wi-Fi via Unifi don’t change their Router Password allowing easy access for a nefarious intruder to logon and gain access to the router. Once inside, they’ll be able to do lots and lots ...
• Celcom launches LTE in Malaysia
  Coming just days after an announcement from Maxis, Celcom is looking to launch their own LTE network. I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about, only a handful of phones in the market will actually be able to ‘enjoy’ the faster speeds of LTE, but I do remember my American Colleagues telling me ...
• Selangor Cyber Cafes made to retrieve personal data
  Goldfries today reports that Selangor Cyber Cafes were given new regulations to make them ‘healthier’. Among the new regulations put in place were: >register their patrons’ personal details based on their MyKad or MyKid identification cards. >use transparent and untinted glass so that what happens inside can be monitored; >have an open layout with no “blind spots” so ...
• Why the SKMM Rm200 smartphone rebate is a bad idea
  The Malaysian Communications And Multimedia Commission (MCMC) or better known by its bahasa acronym SKMM, has recently announced that the government will be offering a ‘rebate’ of RM200 of a list of ‘selected’ smartphones for youthsaged 21 to 30 years old. The program called the ‘Youth Communication Package’ or Pakej Kommunikasi Belia (PKB) has come ...
• No Surprise Malaysia scores low on Science
  This is a tech blog, so let’s talk about tech. Let’s about the technology behind the term geo-engineering. According to wikipedia  “The concept of geoengineering (or climate engineering, climate remediation, and climate intervention) refers to “the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, in order to moderate global warming”. The techniques of geo-engineering are based on science, but applied on scale ...
• SKMM Study: The Best and Worst Telco in KL
  Who doesn’t absolutely hate that feeling you get when a call gets drop, or for some reason you just can’t seem to make a phone call on your network. Recently an elderly couple in America died while trying to phone for help--they had 9 drop calls in succession, which just goes to show just how ...
• Science in Malaysia : Myth #1 Homework
  As I read more about the sad state of affairs of Science Education in Malaysia, I can see glaring areas for improvement, and some areas that surprise me. All of this data is readily available in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) that is actually a benchmark our very own Malaysian Government uses ...
• Malaysia signs ITU
  About 2,000 delegates representing major telecommunication industry players, experts and representatives from nearly 200 member countries of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) assemble here to discuss the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR) at theWorld Conference of International Telecommunications 2012 (WCIT). Shouldering the responsibility as a member of the ITU Council for Asia- Pacific, Malaysia is expected to highlight the important issue ...
• Science Education in Malaysia — it just sucks!
  Putrajaya we have a problem. While the economy maybe growing and the KLCI trending upwards, Malaysia’s number 1 resource is most definitely trending down. In fact there may be a time when it disappears completely and we’ll have to either import it, or live without it. I’m not talking about oil, I’m talking about our scientist ...
• LTE in Malaysia has No iPhone5 support
  Breaking news. That new iPhone that you lined up overnight for outside KLCC–won’t have LTE support, and quite possibly–never will!! So before you plonk down your dough on the next big thing, you might want to consider how you’d feel if within 6 months everybody else on your block had next generation 4G speeds–except you! LiewCF reports ...
• Does the government have a right to shut down telecommunications services?
  Press.Tv reports that Pakistan has suspended mobile phone services in several major cities to prevent terror attacks on minority Shia groups as they celebrate the holy month of Muharram. The rationale behind the suspension is that the terrorist use mobile phone services to detonate bombs and as a result the suspension of mobile phone services ...
• IT Career in Malaysia : Why Information Technology rocks
  So your child has just finish SPM or STPM or A-Levels and now you’re looking at a possible future career for them, or you yourself have just graduated and considering your future career. This is not something to take lightly, after all it’s the 4th most important decision in your life, behind who you get married ...
• Evidence Act: Anonymity before the internet
  I read a brilliant article on the Evidence act by Zul Rafique and Partners that I think everyone should read. In it, the author compares the newly amended Evidence Act (supposedly amended to combat the evils of the internet) to a sub-section of the original act meant to look into telegraphs. Now I must admit, ...
• Online Medical books in Malaysia: Unibooks.com.my
  A rather entrepreneurial friend of mine realized the Malaysia didn’t really have any niche bookstores that offered free delivery. Sure all the medical students knew where to get their textbooks from, and the designers knew where the best design books could be bought–but for the most part that involved a long trip to somewhere to the ...
• Auditor-General report 2011 : When can Malaysians expect Transparency in IT spend
  As a tech blog in Malaysia, I thought it’d be interesting to see the latest Auditor-General’s report faired in terms of IT spend from the government. IT spend is a tricky thing, and most don’t understand just how tricky it is, particularly around big IT spend by governments–they often fail. In fact, one of my ...
• Cyberbullying in Malaysia
  Tributes are pouring in for Amanda Todd, a teenager who committed suicide after posting the video above describing how she was tormented by bullies and struggling with depression. Amanda’s story was told little by little via post-it notes and it full detail about the extent of the bullying and torment and just how this poor ...
• SEO Tips for Malaysian Bloggers
  A lot of my search traffic comes from Google, in July I had slightly more than 8,000 visits to my site with just over 6,000 of those coming just from Google. So it made a lot of sense for me to look into some Search Engine Optimization to help boost those numbers. In September, I ...
• Let’s put the evidence act into action
  So let’s say someone in Malaysia actually was stupid enough to post something insulting Islam and it’s Prophet on his Facebook page as a status message. Then let’s say that same person claimed that his Facebook page was hacked. Finally, we say there’s a huge backlash against this person on the internet, so even though the ...
• One Visa files suit against TM : Is it a Human Rights abuse?
  The Star today reported that a company called One Visa is suing Telekom Malaysia (TM) for providing telecom services and infrastructure to squatters on it’s land in Negeri Sembilan. TM was alleged to have trespassed five pieces of One Visa’s land by supplying the telco services to the illegal occupiers of its land. One Visa had sought ...
• Setting up a Dlink DDNS for your Unifi Router
  A Domain Name Server (DNS) is basically the address book of the world wide web. What it does in very simple terms is it converts a web address like www.keithrozario.com into an Internet Protocol address like 208.94.116.157 (this might look like garbage but it’s actually 4 numbers separated by a dot, and it’s these 4 ...
• Why I stopped the Nuffnang Ads on my blog
  About 2 months back, I posted up a nuffnang ad on my blog, and with reasons explaining why I felt the need to advertise. The guys from Nuffnang were pretty stand-up characters and I felt like I could trust them, so I begin to post Nuffnang ads and monitor that over time. Unfortunately the results haven’t ...
• WPWebHost : WordPress Hosting in Malaysia from Exabytes
  You may have noticed that my site recently got a spanking new design. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my previous wordpress theme (compositio by Design Disease) and my previous web host (the ever awesome, nearlyfreespeech), but there were 2 real compelling reasons for me to switch web host. First, maintaining wordpress was taking a lot ...
• Ban Youtube in Malaysia?
  Rais Yatim a Member of Malaysian Parliament and a Minister in Government, has threatened Youtube with legal action over their refusal to remove the video of Innocence of Muslims. Nevermind the fact that Youtube have tried their level best to restrict access to the video from Malaysian users, and also failing to recognize the fact that ...
• Censoring Innocence of Muslims in Malaysia
  The Malaysian government has requested that Google take down the video Innocence of Muslims, and Google has since complied. As of today, anyone trying to access the clip from a Malaysian IP address would see a screen that reads “This content is not available in your country due to a legal complaint. Sorry about that.” The ...
• My Faulty Samsung Galaxy S3 has returned
  Before my recent trip to Australia, my brand new Samsung Galaxy S3 failed on me. The speaker just went *kaput*. Well not really *kaput*, but there was absolutely no sound coming out of it. Needless to say I was a bit frustrated, annoyed and just downright disappointed. This was an expensive top of the line phone, and ...
• How to Port Forward your Unifi Dlink Dir-615 router
  Port Forwarding is a really simple concept, but a very important step you need to take if you want to remotely access the devices you have at home. For instance, if you have a Unifi connection connected to an always on desktop and you wanted to Remotely access your windows machine, you’d need to perform ...
• Data Coverage Down Under
  I’ve just come back from a fantastic 2 week long vacation in Australia, and I absolutely loved it. The weather was a bit cold for my Malaysian body (especially in blue mountains), but overall the holiday was a well deserved break from nearly 8 months of non-stop work ;). The one thing I did notice about ...
• Evidence Act Technological Misconceptions: A response to Rocky and Fatimah
  The government has finally ‘relented’ and now wants to ‘discuss’ section 114A of the Evidence act 1950. Now it’s great because it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that: 1. The internet can be used for fantastic good. 2. The general Malaysian public can make a difference in the governance of the country. My website also had ...
• Maxis Fibre to the Home (FFTH) : Why you shouldn’t get it
  Imagine buying a house from a housing developer who insist that even after you’ve bought the house the developer will be allowed access to your downstairs bathroom. So that even after you’ve bought the house and moved in and got that nice kitchen cabinet design you’ve been eye-ing, the developer can still access your downstairs ...
• Google: Lazada.com.my Malaysia is hosting Malware
  Lazada.com.my contains malware. Your computer might catch a virus if you visit this site. Google has found malicious software may be installed on your computer if you proceed. WOW, Lazada Malaysia apparently has been infected with some rather nasty infection. My version of Google Chrome prompted this when I tried to visit the site today. Hope everything ...
• HTTP vs. HTTPs : Why SSL and TLS are important
  I was looking for some detail on Maxis Fibre to Home service until I came across this while trying to to access the Maxis Customer Forum online: In the early days of the internet, all the data flowing through was done in plaintext, this meant that everything flowing on the internet was fair-game for anyone to ...
• MSC Cloud Initiative : Why it’s a bridge too far
  Why does Amazon–arguably the biggest cloud player in the world–choose to launch it’s Asia-Pacific Offering in Singapore rather than Malaysia? One would think that the prohibitively high prices of land in Singapore, coupled with it’s higher base cost and employee wages would make Singapore a terrible place to put up a Huge Datacenter comprising of ...
• NFC page hacked
  The guys over at the NFC can’t really catch a break. The National Feedlot Corporation have had a lot of bad luck lately, but I guess when you get an RM250 Million dollar government loan when you’re wife is a Government minister–you’ve probably already had your fair share of good luck. With the recent arrest ...
• Personal Data Protection Act 2010 Malaysia
  Data is the natural by-product of every computer mediated interaction.  It stays around forever, unless it’s disposed of.  It is valuable when reused, but it must be done carefully.  Otherwise, its after-effects are toxic. – Bruce Scheneier As society moves towards a ‘knowledge’ based society, data naturally becomes a by product. Every action you perform leaves a ...
• How to change your Unifi password
  Now It’s quite clear from a previous post I did how about easy it was to hack a Unifi Dlink DIR-615 Wi-Fi router, that the least you should do is change your standard router password to something that’s more than the regular 8 digit Pin Unifi gives you by default. Let’s take a look at how ...
• How to enable VPN connectivity on Maxis Mobile
  Just a quick post for a Wednesday, as most of you know I just recently purchased my Samsung Galaxy S3 courtesy of the Maxis One Club. With that S3, I also purchased a RM68/month mobile data plan for 3G. Now for those of you with an Android phone that tethering on the Phone is super easy. ...
• What I learnt from winning the DigiWWWOW awards
  Exactly one month ago, I was honored to be awarded the DigiWWWOW awards Fave tech Head award. It was truly unexpected and I continue to feel grateful for it. For those of you who don’t know what the DigiWWWOW awards is, it’s basically like the Grammy Awards for Malaysian blogs, so instead of singers ...
• I’m officially on Nuffnang
  If you didn’t already know, there’s something on the sidebar of this site, something that hasn’t been there before. Something that I’m not particularly happy to put on my site– it is — an Advertisement!!! (gasp!) To be more specific it’s a nuffnang add, about 10 lines of javascript code that will for the next couple ...
• Apple Launches iTunes Store in Malaysia
  Finally… it’s arrived!! It was a long wait since my first iPod, but finally the iTunes has landed in Malaysia. Apple made a rather quite launch of the iTunes Store in Malaysia, meaning the days of logging into iTunes with US accounts and gift card purchases are over. Malaysians now have access to an entire treasure ...
• Is your Wi-Fi safe?
  With the newly enacted Evidence Bill Amendment, you would have been deemed to have published everything that originates from your IP address. What that means is that if someone hacks your Wi-Fi and then uses it to publish malicious or seditious statements online, you will be deemed to have published it, and the onus is ...
• Samsung Microsoft Surface in Malaysia
  This week I was attending a Project Delivery Conference in Putrajaya and was neglecting my blog a bit. The last post on the blog was more than a week ago, and that falls short of my target of 2-3 post a week. That being said, I do have some cool stuff that I’d thought you ...
• Is Dowloading a banned ebook illegal?
  Let’s get straight to the point, the latest case where the Federal Territory Islamic Affairs Department (Jawi) is prosecuting a store manager is both disgusting and without merit. Not only is she just a Manager carrying out here duties–thereby making the bookstore liable instead of her, but the raid on the bookstore was carried out ...
• Finally got my Samsung Galaxy S3
  Finally after a long long wait, I managed to get my Samsung Galaxy S3 from Maxis. I got the phone last Wednesday and now after just 5 days with it, I have to say — best Rm999 spent EVER! For those of you still curious as to how I got it for Rm999 when I recently ...
• 10 Strange things about the ICANN Generic Top Level Domains (gTLD)
  I wrote a very long time ago, about cool Top Level domains you could buy. For instance I wanted to buy the .TH top level domain so that my website could be http://kei.th . Unfortunately, I found out that the .TH domain name belongs to Thailand and they’ve pretty made it very difficult for a ...
• Watch Netflix, Hulu and even Euro2012 online from Malaysia
  Malaysians have always been deprived of real-time video content online. We’ve no access to Netflix or Hulu, we can’t watch the full episodes of the Jay Leno show online, we can’t watch the BBC replays of the football matches, we can’t even watch videos from TheOnion for crying out loud. Why? because NBC, FOX, Netflix, Hulu, BBC and even ...
• Netflix accounts for 32% of internet traffic : What it means for pirated content in Malaysia
  Maternity leave has long been plaguing womens career, women would usually take an extended leave and risk falling behind their male counterparts. As an extension to this, employers were also hesitant to hire women (particularly pregnant women) since it meant a legally mandated leave of absence that their male colleagues would never take. Governments have tried to stem ...
• Maxis Loker: A review
  As you know, I’m not really happy with Maxis. I was utterly disappointed by their latest S3 launch, I don’t think their cloud offerings of ebook portal is anything to shout at, and the if my wifes office would get decent Digi coverage, I’d switch in a heartbeat. That being said, this is one of the ...
• Black Day for Malaysians : New Evidence Bill Takes effect today
  Today marks a crucial point in the crusade against freedom on the internet in Malaysia. We’ve had SOPA in the US, ACTA in Europe and the TPP has brought the fight closer to our borders. Today in a brilliant tactical move by the enemy of Freedom,  Malaysians will be subjected to an amended evidence act ...
• Is it legal to buy ebooks from Amazon?
  In my previous post, I wrote about how I bought and Amazon Kindle, and how I can use gift cards to purchase ebooks from the Kindle store. So far the Kindle has been an amazing experience and I personally recommend you get yourself one. However, there is a downside, since there is ‘technically’ no legal ...
• The UK crowdsourced Auditing for MPs : Malaysia Boleh?
  One thing is true of all governments, the most reliable records are Tax records. That is one of the coolest quotes from a very cool movie (which is saying a lot). In V for Vendetta, the heroes try to piece together a puzzle by visiting the tax records to locate some missing information, in real-life ...
• Digi WWWOW Awards
  Digi.com has an annual Internet for all awards where they aim to with the aim of “showcasing the incredible creativity, ingenuity and entrepreneurialism of ordinary Malaysians using the Internet in extraordinary ways” . A much simpler way of thinking about the Internet for all awards is that it’s just like the Grammys for Malaysian blogs. Digi have actually ...
• TM Unifi speeds actually quite GOOD!
  While they may have caused “The Great 9 day downtime of 2012“, and I ‘might’ have been terribly upset with them. Over the past few months, I must admit– My Unifi Connection Speed is Absolutely brilliant!! Say what???! You heard me right, although I had a terrible 9 days of no internet earlier this year, Unifi has ...
• Kindle in Malaysia : Buying and Using a Kindle in Malaysia
  My wife is an avid reader (just like me!), but she reads mostly fiction where as I read non-fiction. So to save on our book bills which often exceed the RM1000 a year each, I thought it’ll be great to get ourselves an ebook reader. This would not only save us money , because e-books ...
• Malaysiakini down!
  *Update: Malaysiakini have confirmed the update on their facebook page, looks like you need to look for other sources of Bersih 3.0  news, this could take a while. It’s also note-worthy that 10 people ‘like’ this on facebook, obviously over-looking the fact that nobody should ‘like’ this. With barely 12 hours to go before Bersih 3.0 ...
• Congratulations LHDN
  The star today reports that: e-Filing looks to be a definite winner among Malaysians well over half of the country’s estimated 2.5 million tax-paying citizens have gone the paperless route. Inland Revenue Board (IRB) figures showed that as at yesterday, 1,621,647 Malaysians had filed their taxes, with online filings accounting for nearly 75% of the total I must ...
• Maxis Launches ebook portal
  So Maxis launched their new ebook portal aptly title www.ebuuk.com.my, far be it from me to point out that an ebook portal should at least have the word book spelled correctly (don’t you think so Maxis), also judging by the SSL certificate it appears wanted to go for a more generic myebooks.com.my domain name before ...
• Russell Peters : A case for copyright
  Update 1: Russell Peters World Tour in Malaysia was sold out in hours. I failed to get a ticket online, couldn’t even log in. A friend of mine lining up in KLCC was told at around 10-ish in the morning that only platinum tickets were available.  Update 2: There are ‘strong’ rumors suggesting there will be ...
• 4 Reasons you need an RSS feed
  If you don’t know what RSS is, prepare to have your mind blown. If you’ve never used RSS, chances are you’re still bookmarking your favorite websites and blogs and visiting them on a regular basis painfully one at a time. RSS feeds allow you to magically consolidate all the content you read online, into one ...
• Lazada : The Amazon clone (and Samwer brothers) finally land in Malaysia
  This blog is about Technology, but in these past few years it’s become impossible to talk about technology without touching on the subjects of copyright and censorship. Very few people have a clear cut definition of what is acceptable copyright infringement and what isn’t. Not too long ago I wrote about how a wordpress theme ...
• Design your perfect server with Skali Cloud
  After doing some research on Malaysian Cloud offerings particularly the IaaS offerings, I noticed something rather interesting from Skali. Now I always remembered Skali as an early web startup some time back in the 90s trying to ride the internet wave but failing all along the way, this however has some promise. Skali takes cloud scalability ...
• MaxisCloud : A silver lining in terms of data transfer
  A couple of weeks back I wrote a long post on the Maxis Cloud comparing it to other IaaS providers like Amazon and rackspace. That post wasn’t too kind to Maxis, and I did mention that there was no reason to use it…unless the data transfer was free. As it turns out, data transfer on the ...
• MCMC can’t solve your Unifi downtime but they’re looking for Gays online
  Bernama reported today that The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission  (MCMC or the SKMM) together The Malaysian Islamic Development Department (Jakim) would begin “collaborating to monitor lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) activities in the country, particularly on the websites.” Apart from the usual gung-ho activity of from Jakim, its Director General  Othman Mustapha said “If we find that ...
• YTL has the most ridiculous Acceptable Use Policy
  YTL Communications has been doing a pretty good job recently. The Star even went as far as claim that “YTL Comms to Break Even” until of course you read the article in which case it mentions that YTL require an additional 500,000 subscribers on top of it’s current 300,000 to achieve that.  However, it did ...
• Bypass Unifi blocking and censoring using a DNS switch or VPN connection
  If you’re on Unifi you might have noticed that some sites are blocked and it’s due to government directives to block these sites.  Now that goes against what the Government of Malaysia promised it’s stakeholders during the advent of the MsC, in which it promised to not censor the internet. If you remember, somewhere in August ...
• SKMM on my Unifi Downtime
  Did you know Malaysia has a Multimedia and Communication Commission that oversees the quality of service for telecommunications companies including the broadband services they provide. I also understand that they are the enforcers of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998, with a determination on the mandatory standards for the Quality of Service (Broadband Access Service) ...
• Copyright laws get dumber: Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement
  A recent article from the Star noted that Malaysia was about to sign a new Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement that would make subject local copyright laws to those imposed by the US. Now according to the article from the star the purpose of us looking into a stricter Intellectual property law was to “encourage investments, innovation, research and ...
• Unifi vs. Yes : The speed showdown
  Alright, so my Unifi is back up and running, apparently it was an area wide network issue that caused half my town to experience a Unifi Blackout, I have thus named this debacle, the Great CNY blackout of 2012. I was left 9 days without an internet connection and was forced to reload my Yes ...
• My Last Hope on Unifi: Twitter
  I posted the tweet above about 40 minutes ago, complaining about my omni-present (or omni-absent) Unifi connection issues about an hour ago. Barely 30 minutes later, a friend of mine retweeted it and cc’ed a TM twitter account @TMConnects TM then ask for further details via a tweet below. As of right now, I’m 8 ...
• Did an email to the CEO really help restore my Unifi services?
  Just this morning I wrote about how my Unifi services went down and how I wrote a letter to what ‘appears’ to be Telekom Malaysias CEO email address. A lot of Malaysians are skeptical that CEOs would actually respond to emails. Steve Jobs has responded to many emails personally and so has his successor Tim Cook. There ...
• Unifi sucks: Here’s why
  Last year I moved into my new place, and had to apply for Yes! broadband because my place wasn’t Unifi ready yet. I blogged about how much I enjoyed the Yes! experience and even recommended it to most friends and family. That little love affair however took a turn for the worst when I discovered ...
• Unauthorized withdrawals hit DBS and POSB customers, withdrawals done in Malaysia
  According to a report from Channel News Asia, a total of nearly 200 DBS and POSB customers in Singapore have been hit by unauthorized withdrawals averaging S$1000 each. The withdrawals were done in Malaysia “while the ATM cards were with them safely in Singapore”. Which begs the question what does ‘safely in Singapore’ mean? Channel News ...
• Censorship in Malaysia: SOPA told through Malaysian Eyes
  There’s been a recent surge of Anti-SOPA and Anti-PIPA sentiment over in the Unites States, Wikipedia blacked out it’s entire webpage and Google, Twitter and Facebook all joined in the fray. I’ve even received multiple emails from the Mozilla foundation on how to combat SOPA and recent a congratulatory cum Thank you note from Mozilla ...
• How much do you trust Google?
  I basically live on Google servers, the first sites I visit when I wake up are Google Mail and Google Reader, without these two sites I’m basically lost. I seldom log on to facebook anymore and twitter may keep me occupied for about an hour, but after that I need my fix of Google. Google ...
• Kampung Wi-Fi: What’s going on?
  Late last year the Government announced the Kampung Wi-Fi (or Village Wi-Fi initiative). The initiative was mooted by The Information, Communications and Culture Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Rais Yatim. Currently there are already 1,400 villages with Wi-Fi access and the Government hopes to increase that to 4,000 by year end. That’s good news to a lot ...
• Tricubes gets new RM6million contract
  Sounds surprising and quite convenient, that a company that reports a loss of Rm17 million, goes on to report that they have a lifeline, in the form of  a Rm6 million dollar contract from the police to “maintain the Royal Malaysian Police’s (PDRM) mobile systems for two years starting January 1“. Quoting this Malaysian Insider Report ...
• PPSMI:Where’s the Science?
  A couple of hundred years ago, if you wanted to find out what was inside a horses mouth, you’d go to a quite corner and sit for a while and contemplate what was in a horses mouth. This sounds anathema to anyone reading a blog in the 21st century, but it was quite common in ...
• Tricubes reports Rm17million lose, typo in Annual Report
  About 2 years ago if you typed “miserable failure” on Google the first listed webpage would be the wikipedia entry for President George W. Bush, apparently a few guys found out how Google ranks their pages and decided (with a little help from friends) to push up the GWBs Wikipedia page for the search entry ...
• Computing Professionals Bill: Final Verdict
  In what I hope is my last post about this ridiculous bill, I hope to ask and answer an important question I’m surprised no one has asked yet… Why do we need such a bill? In essence do we need to raise standards, or provide assurance to employers regarding hired professionals. I believe the answer is NO. ...
• I’m so happy….
  My blog & name was mentioned on BFMs tech talk today. Woo hoo!! I’m so happy!! You can download the podcast of the show at BFMs website here , and it’s fantastic (partially because it mentions my blog). So while MOSTI still hasn’t given up on the bill, apparently no one in the Industry wants the bill ...
• Computing Professionals Bill: 10 reasons to kill the bill
  So there’s a lot being said about the new Computing professional bill, even on this blog. For now though, if you’re really interested in finding out about the legal implications of the law, check out this amazing article here from the Bar Council Website written by ‘The Awesome’ LoyarBurok. Or if you’re in the mood ...
• Jobstreet does its bit for Thailand
  The Thais have had a rough couple of months. With floods inundating entire swaths of the country, Bangkok had to revise its GDP estimates for the year and even hard-disk prices spiked due to limited supply. There is some good news though, Western Digital recently started up it’s plant in Thailand (although no news on ...
• Computing Professionals Bill: This is IT
  Some laws you have to fight wars to keep….others you have to fight wars to be repealed. This is one of those laws you have to fight to prevent from ever being made a law… On April 12th , 1861 Confederate forces attacked Union Military installation named Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The attacked marked ...
• Computing Professionals Bill 2011: Not again!!
  The Malaysian government is a crazy bunch, just today I saw two bits of news that left me squirming with disgust. First a short piece on Christmas Carollers requiring Police Permits to go Carolling (not just permits but full details of every activitiy) and then later today there is a new Computing Professionals Bill 2011. Why ...
• 3 Reasons to say NO to Yes Mobile
  I recently purchased a yes mobile account, and was pretty happy the results. In my past review I mentioned that the speed was great followed by good stability. However, there have been some downsides to the service, and here’s some reasons why you should avoid yes mobile. While Yes is great, there are overall flaws with ...
• Yes.my : A review of Malaysias 4G broadband
  I’m going a bit off tangent today and focus on Malaysias latest 4G broadband. Recently I moved house and my new area didn’t yet have UniFi, so to avoid locking myself down to contracts I decided to go for a pre-paid wireless service offered by YTL called Yes. Initially I was a bit skeptical on the ...