Tuesday, May 30, 2006

New Mobile Phone

I got a new belated birthday present the other day. A fantastic top of the range mobile phone. A highly advanced piece of technology designed to make everyday life more efficient and easy. Not likely. Four attempts at informing my friends and family failed spectacularly. More so embarrassing due to the fact that I should be fairly competent at these things in my game. My only amusement comes from the fact that for the times that I failed to send a complete message, I got replies back from friends and family asking who the sender was. Out of all those people, I wonder what percentage of those were likely to have been a little worried due to either debt collectors/secret lovers/unwanted pests etc.....

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Favorite Post Pub Food

While hard at work with the BBC News 24 channel in the background pumping out more depressing news, I listened to the news of several arrests relating to terrorism. Apparently, the surveillance carried out included internet cafe's, peoples homes and kebab shops. Kebab shops ?

I on occassions enjoy the delights of a polystyrene box of heart attack food but would never have expected the old kebab shop to be a venue for plotting world domination. Imagine that ? Chief Al-Qaeda generals sitting round a table with secret schematics and plans for attacks on targets around the country munching on a large meat (could be chicken because its healthier) doner, extra chilli sauce and a large helping of salad minus the beer, presumably because said nutters don't drink the evil that is alchohol. What ever next ?

I guess US CIA operatives counter planning a strategy to end world terrorism in the bowels of McDonalds!!!

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Eurovision Song Contest

Well, well, well. You really do have to question what the world is coming to when you see a bunch of Devil worshippers (allegdly) winning the contest (by a wide margin too). What next ? An entry from Opus Dei ? That would make an interesting religious battleground between good and evil. The event of the year. With Terry Wogan commentating.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Gary McKinnon ....The modern Day Robin Hood.. Hacker

Sorry for not posting earlier. I've been rather busy applying for jobs.

This McKinnon chap is rather a fascinating character. A certain Walter Mitte springs to mind (by the way I'll find the correct surname spelling). No doubt that he is a competant hacker but if anyone who has a reasonable idea of IT security should know that some of what his interview (see the bbc new website video) contains is of a man who clearly has been caught, wants to have a media prescence, and is trying to impress the general public with his findings which may or may not be true (he's been a very, very silly boy). As I'm writing this I've listened to his reasoning behind the hack, his remorse, his lack of ability to lie about the technology used to 'hack' into confidential closed networks. Who on earth would be stupid enough to have an outward facing corporate/military/governmental network to the internet ? How on earth would he have tunnelled through the VPN to a network containing such sensitive information ? Who would be stupid enough to expose such an easy way to get in through a firewall ? Who would be stupid enough to hang a modem off the back of a PC on a 'closed network' ?

Don't answer that. Or do if you think you know.


The technology he described that was used seem's, how can I say, incapable of producing such covert an operation. He say's that his hadn't been detected in two years yet he was using a remote desktop tool, i.e. SMS or VNC. The Java version of VNC perhaps as he described. Even so, I think there is only one answer for this. He clearly got suckered into a honeypot. Designed as a trap for the intelligence unit to understand the profile of a modern hacker....

Nice try Gazza. UFO's ? Pictorial evidence that he just managed not to get in time ? After two years ? Could one apparently intelligent person not have realised after all that time that he might want to take a record of all this. After all, his reasoning was because the public needed to know.

Smell the air man. There's more to life than watching the X-Files. I have a conspiracy theory of my own. How about this Mr McKinnon that you've actually been tampered with and reprogrammed into creating this whole story....or employed by the secret service to otherwise follow this line of enquiry to detract from something that might be more ....

....God I do miss the X-Files :-)