Over and over again corporations have been trying to control the Internet and make it their product and governments have been trying to make it their terrain. Meanwhile many, the masses, think it's fine, nothing wrong with any of this People like shiny new products and the government is just trying to protect it's people (just like in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, China, etc etc).. . ..

Since the UK riots, the UK prime minister, David Cameron, would like to have a red button that can shut down "social media" in case. In case his subjects through a fit or something. A red button that can shut down Twitter, Facebook, Blackberry Messenger and probably everything I guess because.. I mean.. wait, maybe he doesn't know about the other websites and services that exist, lets not tell him.

Not so long after that, like a few days ago, during an attempted protest in San Francisco, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) cut off access to the mobile phone network. So, no protest, no problems. No problems at all.

Of course Anonymous played around with the BART's website and exposed how securely they store their user's data. However, penetrating websites and exposing data, flaws, etc is just not going to be enough, BART probably does not care, they will reset their passwords, apologise to their clients and move on. As for the incident, they gave a nice explanation for their actions.

Maybe I'm just getting too paranoid, I mean, communications are private and nobody reads your emails, chat sessions and SMSes right ? Of course not, but still, police arrest a man for organising a water fight via Blackberry Messenger! A water fight !? And how did they know ... .

Maybe because Blackberry has agreed to help the police and has probably opened their doors wide open so the government can investigate on the riots. And on anything else they seem to stumble on. Like water fights ?! I still can't believe this.

Many have been comparing the looting and riots to the Arab Spring, obviously that is stupid as the UK's citizens have so much freedom compared to any Arab Spring affected country. That being said, as they are fighting and gaining freedom, others are getting very close to losing it.

Maybe we will all soon be dreaming of escaping to North Korea.

Black & Berg, a security company, has exposed the truth behind TeaMp0isoN and Lulzsec.. . it's all made up. .. ... . Or is it ? ... . ..... . Or, which part is actually made up ?

They seem to have two domain names/websites, blackandberg.com and blackbergsecurity.us but they are currently down (they redirect to google.com). you can see what their site used to look like via google.cache.

After reading a bit of their "Genuine" twitter account and some of Jo Black's twitter (and replies, those are the best), it' seems like this is a Ligattalike company. Their website is owned and they are tweeting about how they want to declare war on Anonymous, (something about an itchy finger). One word: Losers.

The U.S. government has declared that hacking can now to be considered an act of war in certain circumstances. Until now when someone hacked into a system they could eventually be traced and get some fine or even prison time and such. Now if it's an act of war, well, I guess they consider they can now just bomb your place or something. I'm not sure how this really works.

Lulz Security, or LulzSec, is a serious organisation that doesn't like to laugh. So they hacked into some FBI affiliated website, infragardatlanta.org just for the fun of it, they had to it was Friday. They seem to be doing this to demonstrate that it's a ridiculous concept that seems to say "we don't know how to secure our databases so... you know, we'll resort to fists".

Read more about lulzsec releases, and if that is down a report of this incident can be found here.

Lately Sony's Playstation network has been totally compromised and has been down for I don't even know how long and seems wont be back up until next summer or something.

The reason for the outage has changed since it all started, first it was hacked by Anonymous, then it was down because of equipment failure or something.. Now it's been hacked by professional Internet robbers with the intent to re-sell the data, estimated at 100 000$ or more.

Since Sony has been a real bunch of assholes with some hardware hackers (Sony clients), like graf_chokolo and geohot, they have annoyed a few people and they have to expect a reaction. If we live in a world where in a couple of days (or less?) some people can get their homes raided, their R&D stolen from them and other things like fines, prison threats etc etc etc, then do expect a reaction that will not be (only) in the form of protests, boycotts, rants, etc...

At what point does one company have too much power ? And how on earth did we come to this point where taking apart an object you own and playing with it is illegal because you don't own the things you buy ? Will Ikea sue me if I transform a kitchen worktable into a bench and publish a howto ?

So, kiddie script hackers, a failed hard drive, the Internet mafia or God herself ? Doesn't matter, Sony deserves everything it just got, heck it probably deserves so much more.

My first and second (and third) impression was "this must be an April Fools' joke... I'm sure it must be.

source: e-edition.metro.co.uk (you can put any fake email in their box).

We [should] all know that trusting third party SSL roots is bad, but if you are still not convinced then read how Comodo's SSL service was compromised. In short a reseller account was broken into and from there the attacker requested certificates for 7 domain names.

What this means is that certificates are issued without being verified. Whether it is the reseller or an attacker that is trying to generate certificates, they are not really verified, they are simply issued. Again, why do people trust ANY of these Certificate Authorities ?

Maybe time to think more about Monkeysphere and/or an SSL verified over DNS system.

Today I found a copy of Metro in the tube and actually picked it up. of course the main news, like everywhere else this Monday morning, was about the earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis around Japan. What disturbed me a bit today was the special event advertisement that had gone out, today was special Pokémon.. . Not sure what to think about this, just plain bad taste or bad timing ?

It appears that some just want to help out the Libyan people so much that they are willing to help them by surprise.. . It's almost comical how MI6 and SAS officers got caught by some farmers and were then handed of to the rebels.

I can only wonder what were the real motivations for this ? Was it out of pure solidarity, that burning desire to do what you can to help ? Create good relations with the future new controllers of Libyan oil ?

Whatever may be the real motivations, I tend to think that a good way to help the oppressed would be to stop selling weapons to their dictators in the first place.

And what a shitstorm this could very well be.. Money is currently (no pun intended) being spread upon the peoples of Saudi Arabia in an attempt to prevent them from committing illegal actions like, protests.

The next move could be on March 11 2011. We will see if either the people settle for money or if the government gives in OR if shit rains and then the western governments get really confused about how to react...

Update - links

• Saudi activist shot dead
• Saudi Arabia on Wikipedia

After seeing this guy, Gregory D. Evans talk last year about Wikileaks, the Anon people, Mastercard and all that I seriously felt this guy was a bit of a phony. It turns out, his emails where got to and twitter accounts, personal and professional where broken into.

It only seems logic that a firm (Liggat) that boasts they can teach how to become a hacker in 15 minutes cannot realistically know anything about security. Anyway, links with more info here:

• Full article from TheTechHerald
• Copy of the announcement
• Gregory's C.V.
• T-shirts sold by Liggat - If they find the attacker they HAVE to offer him/her/them one of these !
• http://ligattleaks.wordpress.com/ - Ligatt leaks - Closed
• ligattleaks.blogs.ru - Not closed (yet?)
• twitter.com/ligattleaks - Close one and many others open..

Bonus image of Gregory D. Evans.

The new year dead birds mystery has been shortly followed by a other mysterious events. Indeed the streets of London have been invaded literally overnight by Christmas trees. They seem to have just fallen from the sky.