The Bigsibling Blog

Our freedom loving *cough* allies in the middle east made a rather huge faux pas over the weekend. The benevolent and democratic *cough* government of Pakistan decided that the YouTube contains content that is blasphemous, and that the free people of Pakistan should not be allowed permitted forced to watch such trash. So they issued a mandate that the YouTube was to be blocked so that the intelligent and free *cough* people of Pakistan would not be subjected to such filth.

One Pakistani ISP decided the best way to stop the nefarious YouTube from breaching Pakistani’s peace loving *cough* borders was to change, in the BGP tables in their routers, where the YouTube was located to a server within Pakistan.

This seemed to work out very well…but probably was not fully thought out. Because when the ISP’s router began broadcasting the change, it was picked up world wide, causing all traffic meant for the YouTube – worldwide – to be re-directed to said server. This caused the YouTube to be unreachable for about an hour, and for the telecom delivering the majority of Pakistan’s bandwidth to shut down their connection while things were sorted out.

I’m certain this ‘poisoning’ of the Internet was completely unintentional. Just an example of someone probably wanting to take a short cut in their work without fully realizing how their equipment worked (and these are the people we outsource tech support to? – no, wait, that’s India, never mind). But this got me to thinking about something similar happening maliciously.

For instance, say someone altered their BGP tables to point charlesschwab.com to a server they controlled with a website which had the same look and feel of the real charlesschwab.com. Now, it is fairly easy to tell a phishing site from the real website, if the address is something like www.charlesschwab.com.itakeyoumoney.net, then one is probably not at the charlesschwab.com website. But with the users being re-directed at the level we’re talking about, the address would still see www.charlesschwab.com. How would one know? So you enter your username and password and get an error about the site being down for maintenance or some such, and to try back in an hour or so. And when it is tried again, this time going back to the real charlesschwab.com website, everything works and nobody’s the wiser.

Kinda scary to think it about…isn’t it?

Now I haven’t been in the hardware side of the house for a long, long time, and even when I was, my knowledge didn’t go that deep. But the scenario sure seems plausible on the surface. There are probably a wide range of reasons it wouldn’t work.

source

Technorati Tags: Pakistan, BGP, YouTube, Internet

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When I lived in the Last Frontier, up in the frozen north (that’s Alaska for those of you in Parma, OH), our main Internet connection to the “outside” was a fibre-optic cable running under the ocean between Washington state and Alaska. Now, keep in mind that this was before the emergence of broadband. This was when 33.3K modems were all the rage. And when the 56K modems came about, it was like a great opening of the floodgates of the Internet for that frozen land.

At any rate, every once in a while that cable would be severed. Usually by a fishing boat dragging whatever fishing boats drag along the ocean floor. Sometimes on purpose by the fishermen on those boats, if their stuff got tangled in the cable. It was simply easier to cut the cable than it was to try and untangle the net – and way cheaper (for them anyway) than cutting their nets. But his kind of thing happened maybe twice a year. And even then, with only dial-up access (for you kids out there, imagine a web page taking 10 times longer to load than it does now – and that’s what we played games on – so quitcher whining about lag) it would considerably slow down Internet traffic in and out of the state. The ISP help desk I was working for at the time would be flooded with calls because Granny couldn’t download the pictures of her grandkids (back then, very, very few businesses did any real business over the Internet – and folks, it wasn’t all that long ago).

Knowing what it actually takes for one of these cables to go  belly up, and knowing that the accidents aren’t really all that common, this story comes with some ominous overtones:

CAIRO – Damage to undersea Internet cables in the Mediterranean that hit business across the Middle East and South Asia was not caused by ships, Egypt’s communications ministry said on Sunday, ruling out earlier reports.

The transport ministry added that footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables showed no maritime traffic in the area when the cables were damaged.

‘The ministry’s maritime transport committee reviewed footage covering the period of 12 hours before and 12 hours after the cables were cut and no ships sailed the area,’ a statement said.

‘The area is also marked on maps as a no-go zone and it is therefore ruled out that the damage to the cables was caused by ships,’ the statement added.

Two cables were damaged earlier this week in the Mediterranean sea and another off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to Internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and South Asia.

A fourth cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged on Sunday causing yet more disruptions, telecommunication provider Qtel said.

Earlier reports said that the damage had been caused by ships that had been diverted off their usual route because of bad weather.

Egypt’s communication and information technology ministry said it would report its findings to the owners of the two damaged Mediterranean cables, FLAG Telecom and SEA-ME-WE4.

A repair ship was expected to begin work to fix the two Mediterranean cables on Tuesday.

Now, if an undersea cable that rests on the ocean floor in a traffic area gets cut or broken maybe twice a year; what are the odds that four undersea cables are cut – by accident, in a no-go zone, in such a close timeframe? I’m going to venture that the odds are almost-but-not-quite exactly the same odds that John Edwards has of winning the Presidency this year.

Something to be on the lookout for are any major attacks in the next month or so. Sure, it could be nothing, but disrupting communications is usually a portend of something to come. Of course, they didn’t completely cut off communications. In this day and age there are so many avenues of communications that it would be night impossible to completely cut off communications, but with so many business relying on the Internet for their busines dealings, disrupting that does cause a massive disruption and could potentially cost business millions or even billions in damages.

I first learned of this story via ZDNet blogs, where Threat Chaos blogger Richard Steinnon reported on it. What I found completely amusing, and somewhat worrisome were the comments left by readers of this blog. Here are some excerpts:

US installing interception equipment.

Now it comes out. There were no ships around that area, but the cables were mysteriously cut because of ship’s anchors? Anyone with even a 2-digit IQ would realise this is the US getting their hands on it to install surveillance gear. (kraterz)

RE: Fourth cable cut in Mideast

Is it coincidence this happens a few days after the U.S government announce “Afcyber” or just bad luck on their part? You decide. (jim_56K)

Absolutely.

Absolutely possible. The US and Israel work very closely together on many defense aspects, you can’t rule out these two countries working together on this even, given the nature of the operation. (kraterz)

It’s the GOP old tactic.

They try to fear the annoyed American. They did that in the last election and Bush won. They’re doing it again to stop people from favoring the Democrat. (ThBird)

See these peoples thinking process? The scary part is that I imagine (and dreadfully hope I am wrong) that these nimcompoops are actually going to cast a vote for our next POTUS *shudders*.

Technorati Tags: Fibre-Optic, Middle East, United States, Internet, Nefarious, Terrorism

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Artists depiction of the Microsoft Santa 2.0?

The good folks over at Microsoft, last year created a Windows Live account, northpole@live.com. This account was supposedly linked to the main man of Christmas, the Kringleator himself, Santa Claus. Microsoft encouraged kids to IM Santa and talk about what they wanted for Christmas. All worked splendidly last year. Santa chatted with the kiddies and the kiddies loved chatting with Santa.

So, realizing the success of last years program, the good folks at Microsoft dusted off their virtual AI Santa and turned him loose on the kiddies again this year. But this year, Santa came back…with a vengeance (dum-dum-dummmm). Well, okay, maybe not a vengeance, but at least with a potty mouth. It seems if one prodded the AI Santa enough about eating pizza, he would reply “You want me to eat what? It’s fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else.” And if one were to insult him, he would reply in-kind calling them a “dirty bastard.”

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Technorati Tags: Santa, Oral Sex, Microsoft, Artificial Intelligence

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Normally, I’m a big fan of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Sure, they seem on the surface to be fairly pro-hacker/illegal downloader, but they have, for years, been out in front of cutting edge technology, wanting that to be free and available to all. Okay, that is kind of a communist/socialist slant, but I tend to agree that technology, and the Internet in particular, should be available to each and every person in the world.

Nothing in the history of civilization can compare to the free exchange of ideas like the Internet. With all of the personal web pages, political pages, blogs, video sites, etc., etc. etc. (ad-infinitum), nothing can spread an idea or philosophy faster than current technology, which of course, includes the Internet.

But with the latest from the EFF, I have to wonder; did the EFF sell out? Did ‘The Man’ get to them? What on earth are they thinking? The EFF, in the guise of being against ‘The Man’, namely Comcast, who have been practicing some controversial network management protocols, come right out in favor of taking unlimited Internet access away from the common man, and making it the sole domain of the Elite. The rich and powerful, the ‘beautiful people’ if you will.

A bit of background for those not in the know. It was recently discovered that Comcast has been forging packets to relieve the burden on its networks, particularly where BitTorrents are concerned. BitTorrent is a form of peer-2-peer file sharing. The watered down, layman’s terms of how it works is thus: Person A has a file to share (could be music, a movie, a television show, software, documents – whatever). He sets up a seed. Person B downloads that file and re-seeds it. Now the file is being offered by Person A and Person B. Person C wants the file. It downloads portions of the file from both Person A and Person B. And when Person C has the file, he re-seeds it, so now three locations are serving up portions of the same file. Eventually, there can be hundreds or even thousands of computers serving up this file. When the hundredth or thousandth person goes to download that file, they are pulling bits and pieces of it from a myriad of different servers.

Comcast has employed a network management protocol which affects the BitTorrent users more than unwashed masses who are looking at their grandkids photos or the latest installment of "Chad Vader" on the YouTube. During heavy network traffic periods, Comcast’s system sees this multiple connections, and pretends to be the remote computer telling the Comcast user that it has shut down, is no longer available. This does not disconnect, nor deny the Internet to anyone at all. In contrast, it ensures that everyone on its network gets a piece of the action (so to speak).

The EFF is lambasting Comcast for its network management system, and wants the federal government (of all people) to make it stop. In addition, they are promoting a type of broadband service that is used in Australia, which is a metered service. What this does is allow only so much traffic from one customer, and then they start charging mega-bucks for overages. Remember the early days of the cell phone? When one had to worry about whether the call they were about to make was worth the $.25/minutes ding it was going to cost them? Yeah, that’s what the EFF wants for our Internet. No more unlimited bandwidth. With that system, only the rich could afford to watch the YouTube, or catch up on the latest episode of "Heros", or even play games like "Lord of the Rings Online", "World of Warcraft" or "RavenShield" online.

With this pronouncement, the EFF has become the enemy of the "Net Neutrality" zealots. Personally, I’m pro-business on the whole net neutrality issue. As long as the ISP sends me google.com at the agreed upon speed, I couldn’t care less if they want to send me yahoo.com at a faster speed. And if they charge yahoo.com more for that ‘premier’ service, what do I care?

But I digress. Back to the Australia model. Let’s compare apples to apples. Currently, I pay US $40 per month for broadband service. This is unlimited traffic with 3000 down and 512 up. AT&T doesn’t filter content, they give me the whole darned ‘Net, and as much of it as I want for that price. Considering that US $1 is equivalent to AU $1.14, that means that I pay about AU $45.75/month for my Internet service. For that price in Australia, I can get 256 down and 64 up speeds with unlimited data. If I want comparable speeds…well…I can’t get comparable speeds. The closest I can get in Australia is 1500 down and 256 up. And that shoots the price up to over AU $100 (about US $88). I don’t know about other people, I do know I couldn’t afford to more than double my monthly Internet fee for 1/2 the service.

It was that I had admired the EFF for standing out and standing up for the rights of the little guy. But now…now they seem to be in the pocket of ‘The Man’. They seem to have sold out. It is a sad day when one witnesses the moral decline of an entity once admired.

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I am still uncertain of what this means. After reading countless articles, blog posts and opinions, I don’t know if I am for net neutrality, or against it. If someone can help me define what side of this fence I fall on, please do so because I really, really want to know.

Here is my stance on the Internet, and its future.

The Internet has become a commercial event. I know, originally it was the land of geeks and nerds. I know it was developed by the US Government using tax payer dollars. I know that it was enhanced and expanded by the universities using (in many cases) US tax payer dollars.

But all of this was (in Internet terms) eons ago. Since the Interenet was released to the general public, and more specifically, to commericial interests, it has grown and blossomed. Sure, in some cases it shows off the worst humanity has to offer, but in most cases, it shows off the best. The innovations and leaps forward in technology of the last 15 years or so can be – at least indirectly – attributed to the Internet.

As I understand this issue there are two sides. One side wants the government to create and enforce laws that will gaurantee equal access to everyone on the Internet, at equal speeds. The other side is in favor of creating a sort of SuperNet, or Internet 2. Something akin to an Uber-Information Superhighway. This is more of a “pay to play” model whereby companies, organizations and individuals can pay money to the service providers (i.e. your cable or phone company, or AOL, NetZero and countless others) to have their content delivered with a higher priority. Kind of like priority mail.

Now, what I have garnered through my readings is that the biggest complaint people make against this type of tier delivery is that the ISPs are making money on both ends. They are charging the individual for access to the Internet, and they want to charge content providers for access to their networks. I don’t see anything wrong with this if the market will support it.

Now, let’s say CBS wants to stream a television show…like Jericho. CBS puts the show out there for everyone’s pleasure. Now AT&T comes along and tells CBS “hey, you have this TV show available, and for just $$$ a day, we will give that show preferred priority on our backbone.” CBS has the option to pay AT&T to get the priority access, or it can not pay AT&T and let the TV show stream along much as it does today. It will be up to CBS to make that decision. What does it cost you and me? Nothing.

There are those that cry “They’ll put the little guy on a slow pipe if they don’t pay.” But this is erroneous I believe. I have a deal with AT&T. For X amount of dollars per month that I pay them, they will devliver internet content at X amount of speed. If that speed were to change, I would find a new provider.

The thing is, if the market will allow the ISPs to make as much money as they can, and the government shouldn’t be involved. If the market will allow for a 2nd bandwidth tier that will deliver content faster, and the content provider is willing and able to pay for it, why not? What will it hurt me, or you, the end consumer? It won’t. We have choices on who are providers are. If we do not like the service we are getting from AT&T, then we can go with Earthlink, or cable, or any number of other service providers.

In the end, my position is one in favor of industry, in favor of capitalism, in favor of – doggon it – just keep the blasted government off everyone’s backs. Let the ISPs make a buck or two without regulating everything into nothing. If the ISPs require more money to run their backbone, and they are not allowed to charge content providers, then who do you think is going to pay for that?

So, taking all of this into mind, can someone please tell me which side of “Net Neutrality” I fall on? I just can’t figure out if I’m ‘fer it or agin it’.

Oh, and thanks for letting me rant a bit.

Technorati Tags: Net Neutrality, Government intervention, Technology

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Microsoft has given a demonstration of “Milan” a/k/a Microsoft Surface. This is ultra cool stuff. But I’m still waiting for my flying car!

See the video at MSNBC here. I wish I could embed it, but I guess MSNBC is kind of stingy with that stuff.

Technorati Tags: Technology, Bill Gates, MSNBC, Microsoft, Milan, Surface

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I found this over at ZDNet. Pretty funny. A company that is founded on the practice of sharing undocumented copies of software, DVDs and music, gets hacked.

Pirate Bay hacked, database stolen by ZDNet’s Ryan Naraine — According to an alert posted on The Pirate Bay’s blog, the stolen user credentials were encrypted but the site is still urging users to immediately change usernames and passwords to avoid the risk of identity theft.

You just can’t make this stuff up!

Technorati Tags: Pirate Bay, hackers, database, customers, irony

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I have for years been a big fan of AMD chips. Generally, they are faster and less expensive than Intel chips. Plus, I have constantly been a sucker for the underdog. That, it appears, is about to change.

“The AMD rep spelled it out in words that would have been undiplomatic coming from me: He said that the new chips will “block unauthorized access to the frame buffer.” In short, that means an unauthorized party can’t save the contents of the display to a file on disk unless the content owner approves it.” – Tom Yager

For those who are unaware of what this means, it means that if one pops the latest Britney CD into their computer, they will not automatically be allowed to copy the songs to their PC or other media device (i.e. iPod, MP3 player etc). Does anyone out there remember the fiasco when Intel put transmitted serial numbers in their Pentium chips back in the 90s? Or just a few years ago when Sony put that rootkit on their audio CDs? This is along those same lines. What AMD wants to do is prohibit a person from using their computer as they see fit.

“This DRM will control what users have access to. In short, it will
block unauthorized access to the frame buffer. This means that
unauthorized users (that’s you, the people who will be buying these
chips) won’t be able to save the contents of the display to a file
unless the content owner (companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Sony
Pictures and so on) gives you permission.” – Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

From the articles I gather that unless a content provider, even a simple website, specifically grants one the permission to save a file to their computer, they will not be able to do so. If AMD is indeed proceeding down this path, it is good news for Intel. That is, unless Intel goes the same way. If that happens, it would be good news for anyone else who wants to get into the computer chip making business.

Personally, I would pay more for a computer chip that allows me to do what I want when I want on the computer that I paid for with my hard earned cash.

sources:
How AMD hopes to turn things around – by adding DRM directly to the CPU
Content in lockdown

Technorati Tags: AMD, DRM, Intel, Big Brother, Rights, Content Management

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Maybe Shakespeare had it right when he wrote “first, kill the lawyers.” There are so many unscrupulous ones these days. Out to make a quick buck on shady cases. I truly understand why there are those clamoring for tort reform.

Take these lawyers suing Microsoft for example. Microsoft makes 4 versions of their current Vista operating system. They make a Basic version, which incorporates the security features and new file system and what not. Most of the features that make Vista new and exciting. They make the Premium version which includes Direct3D (sort of like DirectX 10), the ultra-cool Aero interface, media center and some of the other bells and whistles that make Vista new and exciting.  Then they have Professional, which has all the cool bells and whistles of Premium with the exception of media center, plus adds network business type stuff. Finally there is Ultimate which has everything of everything.

Some PCs and notebooks being sold last year, in the pre-Vista world, contained a little sticker which read “Vista Capable.”  It is my belief that most people, and indeed any reasonable person, would conclude that the machine in question could run at least the Basic version of Vista.

A group of lawyers decided that since these machines could not run the all out version, Microsoft must have been misleading people. That since only one version of Vista could run on the machine, that meant the machine was not really Vista Capable. It is, however, only logical and rational to observe that if one version of Vista runs adequately on a machine, then that machine is, indeed, Vista Capable.

Now, I would be with the lawyers if the machines did not meet the minimum system requirements of Vista Basic. That would be deceptive advertising. But who’s deception? Microsoft did not make the machines. Microsoft did not put the stickers on the machines. My guess is that these lawyers are Mac people, and think the OS manufacturer should be responsible for the actions of the hardware manufacturer.

I am not sure if people are aware how these class action suits work. I have been a party to several. Mostly I throw the notices away. What I have observed is that the lawyers get millions, while the rest of us – the supposed ‘wronged parties’ – get something like a $50 coupon to spend at Sears, or get a points discount on our next mortgage (assuming of course we use the same mortgage company that defrauded us in the first place). But still, the lawyers get their hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions, in fees.

source

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Vista, Class Action, lawsuit, lawyers

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That is one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies. For those that are not in the know, the movie is the 1987 sleeper Robocop. But even Robocop would have a hard time defeting American soldiers with the ultra-kewl new gear discussed in the Daily Mail article about future weapons.

This stuff makes one want to run out a join the US Army as long as they can get the neato kit described in the article. The pic is stolen from the Daily Mail article (please don’t sue me, I have nothing already).

Man, I have GOT to renew my subscription to Popular Mechanics – they always have this cool stuff in it.

Technorati Tags: Military, Science, Technology, Soldier, Nano-Technology

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