The Twitters Are Gone....

For many, the world is was in disarray. It seems that the Twitters have been hacked (read: defaced) by the infamous (never heard of them though) Iranian Cyber Army.

Twitter rerouted to an Iranian Cyber Army page.

Click to read more ...

Adobe Flash Player Problems

Updated on Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 22:26 by Willem

Since I encountered some problems with flash on certain websites, I decided to check if my Flash player has been updated since 1972. Normally you can check the Flash settings (incl auto-update functions) through a page on the Adobe/Macromedia website. Which is weird, since you would think that this is a local setting (incl. privacy settings and audio functionalities).... But no. Macromedia/Adobe decided that you have to do that through their website.
The reason being that they can check whatever you are doing with your player.......

Click to read more ...

Google for the Visually Challenged

First I thought that my screen resolution had gone back to the late eighties / early nineties (CGA, EGA, etc.), but it seems that Google 'redesigned' their search page. Damn, those buttons are big....

Google for the visually challenged??

Redelijkheid.com as a FireFox Search Engine

While the content on my website increases, it's getting (a bit) harder to find certain content. Sure, there's this search form in the top right of the website, but this means that you have to open the website first, enter the keyword and hit 'Enter'.

To speed things up I created a custom FireFox search engine. Using this I can search for content on my website directly from the browser. No matter what site I'm currently on.

The custom search engines are located in the profiles directory.

OSX: ~/Library/Application Data/Firefox/profiles/<random>/searchplugins/<searchengine>.xml

Windows: c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<random>\searchplugins\<searchengine>.xml

By adding the following XML file (right-click - Save As) to the directory listed above, you add the Redelijkheid.com search engine to your Firefox search engines.

Click to read more ...

OS X Calulator and Internet Access

This Little Snitch pop-up appeared after I launched the default Calculator application on Apple OS X.

Calculator Surfs the InterwebsWhy on earth would Calculator need Internet access? Looking for floating point error updates? Anyone else has any conspiracy ideas?

Internet Data Retention Law is Live in the Netherlands

It's a fact. As of this Tuesday, the Dutch ISP's are required (by Dutch law) to log all Internet activity of their customers and store the data for 12 months (at the moment). Gitmo Nation has expanded a bit further to the east, according to the No Agenda podcast host Adam Curry (which is a great podcast by the way).

Anyway, the logging is no longer limited to the basic IP connection data, the new law requires the ISP's to log the following information:

General Internet Access:

• Loginname
• IP Address
• Name and address details of of all the parties involved (when available)
• Time and Date the communication took place
• Used service(s)
• The callers phone number in the case of dial-up Internet access
• The number called for dial-up Internet access
• DSL, phonenumbers, MAC address (when using public/ISP sponsored WiFi/Network access)

E-mail:

• IP address used to access or send e-mail
• User ID
• E-mail address of the sender, recipients etc. (basically the FROM, TO, CC and BCC fields)
• Registered e-mail alias addresses when available
• Time and date of the communications
• Name and address details of all the parties involved (when available).
• Method used in sending/receiving the e-mail (webmail, POP, SMTP, IMAP, etc.)

Internet VoIP:

• Phone numbers of both parties
• IP addresses
• Name and address details of all the parties involved (when available)
• Time and date of the communication (start and finish)
• Protocols used during the communication
• Successful and failed attempts to communicate

The 'fun' part is that the Dutch government won't (or can't) give a real reason why this information is required..... Why can't they give the proper reasons for creating and passing this law. Theoretically we still live in a democracy.

My thought is that it's probably based on some vague report by some high-profile consulting company that scared the shit out of the politicians (accountability??). Especially the terms 'child pornography' and 'terrorism' are most likely THE keywords on which the decision is based. And no one wants be publicly not against those two.... And so the privacy of the Dutch citizens crumbles, and crumbles.

Time to start using more and more encryption in all of your communications if you ask me, and start running your own services on a server in your attic .

/me is removing the dust from his PGP keyrings....

How Average Is Your Life?

Or great, of even f*cked up?

Read about the things that are not making it to Twitter. The real things in life.

Starting for the 'average Joe' there's this MyLifeIsAverage website. For those who do (a lot) better, there's this MyLifeIsG(reat). And finally, for those whose life went completely down the drain a FMyLife ('F' as in F*ck :) ).

It's like Twitter; addictive, but different and a whole lot funnier.

(Is there an iPhone app yet for these services?)...

(Not that I really care, since I don't own one)

Broken SSL Trust

WebTrust broken?When a CA issues a SSL certificate they (the registration authority) should verify certain information provided by the requester. This includes at least the domain name ownership and preferably the person or company tied to the domain name ownership. Basic stuff really, but what happens when certificates get issued without any verification? Well, this happened to Mozilla [2].

Basically the complete trust framework collapses (for that CA). Especially combined with hosts file and/or DNS hijacking. What if this incident isn't the first? What if some cybercrook got some SSL certs due to similar mistakes of your favorite bank? You're no longer sure if the https connection of your bank really terminates on the servers of your bank. They could just as easily terminate on a server in Russia or Albania. Which leaves you with an empty bank account (most likely).

If the certificate is issued (signed) by a Comodo Root CA (as it was in this case), your browser accepts this as a valid/trusted CA and for the user everything seems fine. This takes me back to the issue of all those trusted root certification authorities in the average OS or browser.
This time, it's a Comodo affiliate that's screwed up (there's no other way of describing this), but what are the chances that some of those trusted 100+ CA's make a mistake? The bigger the list, the bigger the chance of wrongfully issues (SSL) certificates.

By the way, if you're using an older browser (pre IE6 e.g.), chances are that SSL certificate revocation checking is disabled by default. So even when the revoke they certificate you still wouldn't know.... You can verifiy this by opening the Internet Explorer options section and checking the Advanced tab.

MTV Music Video's Online

MTV placed a ton of music video's online. There are even several charts available. Guess which one is ranked numero uno @ 'Top Rated'?

XS4ALL Plans Outbound Port Filtering

A usenet posting suggests that XS4ALL will provide a filtering service to their subscribers. The filter would consist of 5 levels. Ranging from fully open to 'fully' closed. The first will give you the possibility of running your own services at home, and the latter means you're only able to e.g. surf and e-mail (through the XS4ALL SMTP server).

The filters would give the basic/ignorant user the opportunity of preventing the spreading of malware and other stuff by default. The more tech savvy subscribers can remove the filter for running a bunch of services (webserver, ftp, mail, DNS, etc).

Definitely a good decision. I just hope that the other ISP's will do something similar, because most of the virus/malware/massmailing 'software' is running on PC's run by the average user. Totally ignorant of the malware running on their PC's.

Yet another 'thumbs up' for the quality provider of the Netherlands