Talkin’ bout security

Yes, it’s another post dedicated to Annonymous. It’s another #FFF (Fuck FBI Friday) and today they released over 1GB of private emails and documents belonging to Vanguard Defense Industries(VDI), a defense contractor that sells arms to law enforcement, military, and private corporations. As they say, the emails belong to Senior Vice President of VDI Richard T. Garcia, who has previously worked as assistant Director to the Los Angeles FBI office as well as the Global Security Manager for Shell Oil Corporation. Read all about the release here. (it’s not really eye friendly, I know. Guys, red font on a black background. Really!?)

I found the following part of the release very interesting: “Have fun with the data of Mr. Garcia, former Assistant Director to the L.A. FBI office who now sells his cybersecurity "skills" to the Military and Government for brazen amounts of money.”

Why “skills”, you must be wondering. While the release was being uploaded, they published the webmail link too, and Mr. Garcia’s username and password, so you can browse through his email by yourself. After almost 3 days of public exposure, the guy found out his email was hacked and changed his password.

(photo taken from here)

Wonder what his old password was? Take a deep breath: Gloria88. Without even knowing a single thing about this guy, I’m betting on it that Gloria is his daughter’s name, and 1988 is the year she is born. I mean… COME ON!!! You don’t need to be a hacker to hack that! You don’t even need any computer skills. All you need is a computer, an internet connection and a list of close family members names. A brute force attack with no more than 20 attempts will do the job.

Yes, they do illegal stuff. Yes they hack. Yes they get into people’s computers and publish private stuff to the whole world. Yes it’s prohibited by law. But they are trying to prove a point. I quote: “#FFF shows once more that federal contractors don't even care about the "security" they are selling. They just care for the $$$.”

I don’t even want to imagine how Macedonian security agents demonstrate their security “skills”.  Half of them have their wife’s names as their computer password for sure. No capital letter, no birth year attached to it. Just first name. Raw.

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Behind the curtains

10 years ago, when 9/11 happened, everybody was shocked at first, but after a while people started commenting: Well, they financed them, trained them, supplied them with modern artillery, and now it’s all coming back to them. I thought that’s a public secret, something everybody knows, but there’s no evidence of it, until yesterday when I saw the movie Charlie Willson’s war.

(photo taken from here)

Apparently winning over the soviet invasion in Afghanistan was crucial to winning the cold war for the USA. So they had to supply them with weapons which could shoot down Russian helicopters and jets. But they couldn’t supply them with weapons produced in America, because that would mean that the USA is directly interfering with the conflict, hence the conflict would no longer be between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, but between the Soviet Union and USA. And nobody wanted to initiate a conflict like that at that time, because that would be the equivalent of a third world war. So, non US weapons had to be imported in Afghanistan. Solution?

This is brilliant. They called it Operation Cyclone. Apparently Israel (!) sold Egypt and Pakistan weapons, which were after that given to the mujahidin's in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. This was done of course with the financial help of the Americans. Not to mention that after that people were trained how to use those weapons.

Can you imagine that? Israel, the country that is not even recognized as a state (!!!) by Afghanistan and Pakistan and doesn’t have any diplomatic relations with them, sold weapons to Pakistan so that they could give them to Afghanistan to beat the Soviets. If you don’t believe me, read about it here, you will be as surprised as I was.

And people still believe in bullshit like religious wars? People still go to war, because their governments tell them to? Israel is still fighting half of the Arab world when only 30 years ago it was selling them weapons? Mujahidin's are still going to holy wars with Israel and America, when it was they who sold them the weapons? Americans still believe that they are fighting for freedom in Afghanistan, when it is they who created this mess in the first place? Give me a break! This information is so public (although I never new about these facts, but it’s never too late to learn) and yet, people are still being so brainwashed, that they blow themselves up in the name of God or go and occupy other people’s countries in the name of freedom.

There have always been three reasons to begin a war throughout of history: Territory, resources and women. And in all three of them, religion has been used as a tool to keep the warriors motivated and angry. How is it that it’s the 21st century where information in the form of pure facts is served to us on a plate, and we are still so clueless? 

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Something is wrong with the society

4 days in a row, UK is burning. Rioters are trashing places, setting buildings on fire, robbing people, literally destroying their society. And while England has a tradition with hooligans and riots, it took them 4 days to give a green light to the police to use water cannons. People that have been guests in talk shows and on the news avoided answering the question: Do you think the police is tough enough with the rioters and should it get tougher. As if they were scared to say: No they are not tough enough, they should beat the shit out of everyone they catch! I mean, in times like these it’s not the right moment to measure the level of roughness of the police. Get as rough as you can, for Gods sake, your country is on fire!!!

(photo taken from here)

But in the end, is it really important if they are tough enough or not? This is eventually going to end, the real question is what’s going to be done after that. And it doesn’t concern only England. It concerns all of us! A month ago Norway produced one of the most terrible mass murderers of the decade, maybe even the century. Not a lost fanatic, it’s a guy led by ideals, which he wrote down on a 1500 pages long manifesto. An awfully peaceful country like Norway, a country where the government makes sure you take a dental examination every 6 months (no I’m not making this up!), produces such a fanatic. Imagine what kind of fanatics are produced in other countries where the government doesn’t have time to take care of the dental hygiene of its population, because there are other things to be taken care of, say…. poverty for an example!

Riot is the language of the unheard said Martin Luther King, and obviously there are a lot of unheard people around the world that have something to say. How come nobody listens to them? There are always people around me who tell me that they either love my brilliant idea or that I’m talking complete nonsense. But there’s always somebody who listens to me! Imagine what it’s like asking a brick wall what it thinks of your painting; or asking a brick wall to borrow you some money; or telling a brick wall that it’s an asshole; or crying at a brick wall because your stupid boyfriend cheated on you; or sharing your happiness with a brick wall over a good grade at school... And that ONLY because you have NO ONE else to turn to! I suppose this is the outcome.

I feel so sorry for these young people. The thing is that, even if they don’t want to participate in the looting, I am sure they are not just encouraged, but also forced by their gang buddies to do it. And if they don’t, they will be left out even from their hoodie society, marked for life with a scarlet letter: He’s a pussy! So now he doesn’t fit into our “normal” society, and doesn’t fit into the “bad” society either. Where does that leave him? 

Something is terribly wrong… Listen to this video. If you don’t get the message listen to it again and again until it starts to make you think.

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Anonymous strikes again

Well, as they announced, despite the fact that the president of the Missouri Sheriff's Association said the hackers have more information then they claim, Anonymous delivered today over 10GB of private police information. In their own style, they called this day ShootSheriffSaturday #SSS. You can read the whole announcement by Anonymous here.

What makes this release interesting is that they published emails of police officers who had inappropriate pictures of female teenagers, naming the file PedoSheriff. Check it out here. Besides the stolen emails, passwords, social security numbers etc., they stole a couple of credit card information too, and made an involuntary donations, like this one here.

For your convenience, Anonymous made a little search engine too. Yes, you can search though the stolen emails from the police officers. Anonymous suggests you search for: PayPal, Facebook, vpn, password, confidential. On one hand, I really wouldn’t want my email to be hacked and the whole world to be able to check out my inbox, but on the other hand, especially as a police officer, I would never connect my work email with my Facebook account.

While there is a huge debate going on weather their acts are justified, although they are not legal, the show The Stream on Al Jazeera English made an excellent insiders look on what Anonymous is and how they work. What I didn’t know before, is that this group of people helped the uprising in Tunisia, once the government decided to shut down Facebook pages, deleted various accounts and so on. Check out the whole show below. They talk about why they are so successful until now, how anonymity helps prevail the cause without a possibility for personal glorification, how such horizontal hierarchy works without having a leader and why they are doing this. (You can skip the first 13 minutes, they are irrelevant)

And they are not stopping, believe me! A couple of their mates have been arrested so far, but they do not stop here. An operation #occupywallstreet has been announced for the 17th of September. It seems that New York is going to experience a Tahrir moment.

(photos taken from here)

But, the most interesting is yet to come! And that’s November the 5th – Operation Facebook. Claiming that Facebook has been selling personal information to government agencies and information security firms so that they can spy on you, they say that the communication media we all so adore will be destroyed. Yes! They claim they will shut Facebook down!

 

Not that I have anything to hide or stuff, but I’m going to do a backup of all my contacts, photos, notes and so on, just in case. I have regained contact with people after 13 years of not hearing about each other thanks to Facebook, and as much as FB is going on my nerves lately, I am eternally grateful to them because of this! And I wouldn’t want to lose those contacts and pictures. So people I advise you, start downloading to your hard drive everything you think is worth prevailing on Facebook, because in 3 months, it may all be gone.

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I love you

I love you because when I say I’m fat, you say: That’s true!

I love you because when I’m mad at you, you say: Oh fuck, PMS again?

I love because when I say “Can I have a bite?”, you say “No, I will buy you your own hamburger”.

I love you because after some while of driving around in a circle, you say to me: “Ok, now you can ask for directions”.

I love you because after trying two pairs of shoes that don’t fit, you say to me: “Ok, can we please go now and have a cup of coffee?”

I love you because before eating something that includes onions, you call me and ask: “Babe, are we going out tonight?”

I love you because when I ask you if you love me, you say: “I find you quite simpatico. “

I love you because you have the guts to leave the phone open while I explain some “important stuff” to you, and than claim you listened to every word I said.

I love you because you call me just to tell me what song is playing in the background at the moment.

I love you because before going out, you call me and ask: “Is it really obligatory that I shave?”

I love you because you jump around like a small child full of joy when I tell you it is not.

I love you because you keep claiming that my dad has an axe in one of the kitchen drawers.

I love you because you’re such a skeptic!

I love you because you come and pick me up, when I’m dressed up as fancy as can be, with all 4 windows open while some shitty turbofolk music is rocking in the background just because you want to have fun looking at my WTF face.

I love you, because when I come with a new haircut and ask you how I look, you say: “Em, new jeans?”

I love you because whenever you sense there is a fight coming up, you start saying the magic words: “Yes darling!”

I love you because you like me most when I wake up – swollen eyes and messed up hair.

I love you because you claim you have 3 other girlfriends.

I love you because you buy 750 ml shower gel when going on vacation.

I love you because when I want to go to another club instead of going home, you start singing: “My girl wants to party all the time, party all the time, party all the tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime.”

I just… I simply love you.

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#opPayPal

When injustice becomes Law, resistance becomes Duty. - Thomas Jefferson
 
Many of you probably sense what I’m going to write about in this post. For the ones that are not informed: Remember when Visa, Mastercard and Paypal stopped supporting Wikileaks donations? Well it’s payback time.

The hackers group Anonymous called for a massive boycott on Paypal, asking people to close their accounts. Yes, the hackers group did a bit of a different hack attack this time – no DDoS attacks, this time it’s something completely legal. The reason:  A 20 year old girl arrested for hack attacks facing 15 years in prison and a fine of $500.000 while a rapist gets 11. And here is the fun part: Wikileaks supports them.

#opPayPal instantly became a trending topic on Twitter. Supposedly till now over 35.000 Paypal accounts have been closed. Additional motive for the people to close their accounts was not only that Paypal didn’t support Wikileaks donations, but supports KKK. People continuously complained throughout the day that they weren’t able to close their accounts, so they had to call and to this by phone. Paypal even removed the help page where instructions on how to remove your account were given.

The most interesting part today was not this trending topic though. It was watching how eBay’s stock fall over 3% at the end of the day. Now I don’t have a clue how the stock market works, but it’s more than clear that #opPayPal had an impact on this. Wonder what that drop of 3% means in money? – Over 1 billion U.S. dollars!



What can I say, never underestimate the power of people in large groups. I am really curious how this is going to evolve. Such online activism truly amazes me, and it is the one thing we unfortunately did not use as a weapon when the protests against police brutality in Macedonia were taking place.

P.S. Yes, I closed my PayPal account too. I was gonna do it anyway, never really used it.

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Foreign reactions about Martin Neshkovski and a short analysis

Many of my international friends , asked me what’s going on in Macedonia  when they saw how I am spamming on Facebook with links to sites with strange letters and when they saw that I've changed my profile picture. I briefly explained to them the incident with the murder of Martin Neshkovski. Here are their responses and my personal analysis of their initial instant reactions.

Russian: So? The police killed a man. Why are you making such a big deal out of it? There is nothing you can do about it.

Obviously, the awareness about freedom of speech in this country is not on the highest level. I don’t know if it is because they are afraid or because it is not developed enough. But I do know that there is over-centralized power of the oligarchs and there is literally nothing you can do about it.

Iranian: Only one is killed?

This was his instant reaction. It’s not easy for him as well. He has seen worse. Last year, during the green revolution in Iran, the government was killing young people, just because Mahmudinedzad would not recognize the electoral fraud. A bunch of progressive young people were protesting and they failed. Many of them were killed and Mahmudinedzad is still in power.

German: How can it be that 2 days it was not known who the boy is and the case was not reported?

The people of this country are used to the fact that the institutions do their job by default. She was not interested in how a member of the special police units could kill a young man, but how the case could stumble throughout the institutions.

Croatian: OMG, the police is going to send us to our graves.

I don’t have a comment on this and don’t know what to think about it. I suppose he is a proponent of the ACAB theory.

 

To what level have we developed, I cannot say. I have heard all kinds of comments, positive and negative, stupid and smart, constructive and anarchist, and revolutionary, and conservative. All kinds. A guy was trying to convince me that the video with the mother of Martin was a spin, others told me that I am a traitor to my country and a member of the opposition party (read SDSM ), others saluted the perseverance and effort I invest for this cause, others complained because I want this case to be known abroad as well. What is the proportion of the people with these attitudes I don’t know.

A Facebook event appeared a couple of days after the boy was murdered, which stated that the protest on Saturday will receive a form of a FREE CONCERT. My feelings towards this are pretty mixed up and somehow I cannot have take position if I am pro or against it. On one hand I am all love, peace and happiness, I even have some hippy outfits (I swear), but on the other hand to organize a concert just a couple of days after somebody has died... I don’t know. YOU Decide. I honestly cannot decide if I am pro or against. I was thinking, thinking and nothing ...

Yesterday I had a video chat with a producer of a show on Al Jazeera English that deals with events related to social media. She found out by coincidence about Martin Neshkovski, I don’t know how she stumbled upon my blog, translated it with Google Translate, and contacted me because she wanted to learn more. A couple of days after that, the show reported about the case. You can read about it here: http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/macedonia 

I also had a small discussion on whether the foreign media should be informed about what is going on in Macedonia. Some think that this way our state is being promoted in a negative way. And I understand them. It’s not nice for a country to be reported about, that the state institutions are trying to cover up murder. The world unfortunately still sees us as an underdeveloped and corrupted country, despite the EU-NATO integration. Some do not even know where we are on the map. I have even been asked if we have chocolate in Macedonia. And like every good Macedonian that lives abroad I have been trying with severe pain, sometimes also ironic  (for example the question about chocolate) to explain to them that we in fact are a modern society. That we have and villages that have no sewer, but that they do not represent the big picture.

I honestly think that spreading the news that there is an occurrence of protests not organized by anyone - aka higher level of awareness among the people - will show that we have heads which we do not only use for nice haircuts, but we also use them when we need them. Many people had a prejudice for Arabs, but their attitude towards Tunisia and Egypt changed after the Arab spring. I do not want a Macedonian spring to happen. I do not want a revolution. I want to change their opinion about my country. All those with a different opinion are free to have it. And I respect that. Peace to you all!

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