Alex Au: Hacker strikes fear among “good” citizens

[makapaaa]

http://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2013/11/02/hacker-strikes-fear-among-good-citizens/

Hacker strikes fear among “good” citizens <small class="entry-meta"> Published <abbr class="published" title="2013-11-02T16:26:41+0000">2 November 2013</abbr> media , politics and government , society and culture56 Comments
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Maybe the Stompers best represent our beating heart. There was a passing mention in a Facebook post that 87% were happy with the hacking of Straits Times’ blog website. Schadenfreude is a totally legitimate emotion.

“Stompers” is the name we give to mostly anonymous readers and contributors to the Straits Times wild wild west site Stomp where digital natives can post anything they think newsworthy — mostly pictures and videos of bad behaviour, overflowing drains and women with cleavages.


[Addendum, 3 Nov 2013] Thanks to reader Paul Ananth Tambyah, here is the link to the Stomp article. At left is a screen capture of it taken on 3 Nov 2013, Sunday, at 01:30h. If you scroll down to the bottom of the article, there is a “mood meter” which I assume is dynamic, and at the date/time of screen capture, 85% felt “shiok”(colloquial term for thrilled, happy) with another 3% who felt it was “cute”.[End addendum]

There were a few bloggers who were quick to address the issue, though what may be more remark-worthy is how rapidly the excitement of the incident dissipated. After a brief flurry of news reports and online sharing, it’s largely gone from at least my end of social media. In that brief burst of chatter, however, the thing that caught my eye was how many bloggers and social media participants took pains to distance themselves from the hacking: We don’t approve of such tactics, they kind-of say.

Then what are you saying? That even if you are victimised by a brutish government, you should go no further than respectful and polite conversation?

Is that fear speaking?

Get a grip. Hacking is not sui generis. It is one among a vast continuum of acts of resistance. At one extreme end, there are suicide bombers or roadside explosive devices. Occasionally, we hear of self-immolation. But everyday, there are, around the world, protests, demonstrations and strikes. Angry farmers blockade country highways or dump rotting pig carcasses in front of agriculture ministries. Anti-pollution residents occupy and shut down the factory in their neighbourhood that poisons their groundwater. Workers hearing of their pension fund being raided to pay company debts go on strike.

Perhaps every minute of every day, somebody somewhere is spray-painting politically-inspired graffiti.

Turkish Airlines staff in a protest to safeguard their labour rights, June 2013


All these acts cause disruption or impose costs, either on the public or on private property. If you’re going to take the position that once an act of resistance causes disruption or imposes costs, then it is illegitimate (and we can’t possibly “approve” of that), you are basically ruling out all acts of resistance and condemning humankind to perpetual subjugation. You will in effect be saying that preserving your in-group comfort and convenience is more important than a victimised, dispossessed or neglected group’s cry for attention and redress.

That said, some tactics cause a lot more collateral damage than others. Terrorist bombings or bus hijacks have a tendency to kill and maim innocent people, for example. If we have to draw a line somewhere, it should be on the basis of how well-targeted that choice of tactic is. Causing some inconvenience is one thing; injuring innocent bystanders is quite another. Nearly all people will say bombings and taking hostages are just not on. But by this measure, the hacking of the Straits Times blogsite is pretty well targetted and not more than the tiniest of gestures. How much inconvenience, let alone injury, has it caused innocent persons?

If we are so queasy about even that, quick to distance ourselves from what is a pretty mild act of resistance, then we’re a hopeless lot.

* * * * *

Millions of protesters demonstrated across Brazil in June 2013 over poor transport and social services. This pic is of a demonstration in Belem.


As an aside, why are we so quick to register our approval or non-approval of this hacking? I wonder if the anxious need to register our stand is itself another indicator of the fear that has deformed us. We don’t go around taking clear stances on demonstrations, strikes, even the occasional riot. We may understand some causes better than others, but generally we respect the fact that on certain issues, some people are more affected than others. We recognise that there are times when people get really angry and feel they have few other ways to express themselves with effect. Their taking such action (protests, strikes, etc) is not something that we must instantly pass judgement on.
So why are we doing so in this case?

* * * * *

Brazilians in Sao Jose dos Campos, protesting poor public services, police violence and government. Photo: Roosevelt Cassio/Reuters


There is some speculation that the hacker is Singaporean. People have noted the way the video threat, posted onto Youtube (now since taken down) on either 30 or 31 October 2013, was unusually specific about something our government did — imposing new regulations on news websites earlier this year. There were also slightly derogatory comments about language quality. The video message opened thus:

Greetings Government of Singapore,
We are Anonymous and we believe that we have your undivided attention.
We also believe that you have had the pleasure of meeting our comrade The Messiah, who demonstrated what a single Anon could do to your so call technologically advanced island.
Now allow us to explain the objective of our recent invasions.
The secondary objective was to welcome you to the new rule where ignoring the issues of your citizens will not go ignored by Anonymous. We advise you to stop feigning ignorance and serve the people.
Any form of arrogant and ignorant statement from a person of position towards the people will not go ignored by Anonymous.
Have you forgotten who you work for? Traditionally the workers respect the boss. Let us stick to tradition.
But the primary objective of our invasion was to protest the implementation of the internet licensing framework by giving you a sneak peak of the state of your cyberspace if the ridiculous, communistic, oppressive and offensive framework gets implemented.
​

I thought it interesting that the question of whether he was Singaporean seemed as important as it did. So what if he’s Singaporean? Are we starting from the presumption that the group Anonymous can’t possibly comprise one or more Singaporeans? Is there subtle racial profiling at work? And that if the person behind this attack was Singaporean, he must be some kind of imposter?

In this day and age, resistance networks, e.g. Al Qaeda or Wikileaks, draw adherents and partners (or more accurately, combatants in Al Qaeda’s case) from any number of countries. More crucially, they don’t have defined boundaries; countless smaller, independent or semi-independent groups or individuals are affiliated at the margins.

Curiosity about whether the hacker in this case is Singaporean is understandable, but I think we should be careful not to let his nationality colour our assessment of the depth of his grievance and the seriousness of his mission.

In the same vein, there were belittling comments about how the bombast of the threat was out of all proportion to the demand; see image at left which I think originated from Fabrications About The PAP — the ruling party’s corps of internet “warriors”.
We should see the above reactions for what they are — attempts to:

• cast the hacker as not the genuine article (because he might be Singaporean);
• paint him as a sort of dimwit.

These are attempts to make it easier for others to disassociate themselves from what he’s done, and by extension disassociate themselves from his aims — the dismantling of censorship.

But wait a minute — isn’t the dismantling of censorship what we want?

 

[makapaaa]

Hacker strikes fear among “good” citizens, part 2 <small class="entry-meta"> Published <abbr class="published" title="2013-11-04T15:39:45+0000">4 November 2013</abbr> knowledge and belief , media , politics and government12 Comments
</small> <!-- .entry-meta --> <!-- .entry-head -->Over the Deepavali weekend, nineteen (according to Yahoo) websites of government departments were offline. These included the Land Transport Authority and the Singapore Police Force. “Scheduled maintenance” was the cryptic official explanation though no one reported seeing any prior notice. Deepavali (also known as Diwali) is a major Hindu festival. Considering that a significant number of IT engineers are of Indian ancestry, it seemed a strange choice to pick this particular weekend to do IT work, and to “maintain” 19 government websites simultaneously.

Of course, “scheduled” could mean something planned 25 minutes in advance, though such a squeeze on the meaning of the term would by itself indicate that there’s a hidden back story.

As for the context, most Singaporeans would know. But for the record, perhaps I should recap. Around 30 or 31 October, a video claiming to be from the hacker’s group Anonymous — not that there is any reason to doubt its authenticity — was put on Youtube threatening an attack on the government of Singapore and calling for a larger protest on 5 November. On 1 November, a section of The Straits Times’ blogsite was indeed hacked. Both events lit up social media.

Saturday, 2 November — Deepavali itself — numerous government websites were down.

The most unexcited explanation would be that the government took the threat seriously and felt that it had to harden its websites. Urgently. A new leak just in (see Report blames outage of Singapore government websites on ‘routing issues’, ‘hardware failure’) supports this hypothesis. This however raises a few other questions. Not being an IT engineer myself, I don’t know if these are pertinent questions or what the answer might be, but it seems to me questionable how the government can know within 24 – 48 hours what the vulnerabilities of a website are when it has been oblivious to the matter for years and years. All of a sudden, you know where to look and what to fix? All of a sudden, you know what the solution is? Not very logical, but perhaps IT engineers among my readers could advise.

The main Straits Times site was also down with no warning on Sunday (3 Nov 2013) night

More exciting, and surely more speculative, was the thought that one or more attempts at intrusion were detected and the government had to quickly shut down the sites. That several websites of the Philippines government were also hacked the same weekend by Anonymous only made the speculative theory more appealing.

But either way, the official explanation of “planned maintenance” just didn’t ring true.

It reminded me of the Chinese government’s initial response when cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) first appeared ten years ago in the spring of 2003. The authorities denied that a contagious disease was spreading. Officials were not telling their citizens anything and were lying to the World Health Organisation about the death toll. According to Bloomberg, in first weeks of the outbreak, 774 persons died.

Here in Singapore too, we have a government that is so paranoid about being seen to have lost control of events, that it uses the same playbook: clam up, deny, use whatever excuse it can rummage up from a near-empty drawer.

The thing about governments obsessed about appearing invincible is that they also tend to believe that they have more credibility and enjoy more trust than they actually do. The two are linked. Governments that first begin by wanting to cement their control through appearing invincible quickly see that getting people to take seriously and believe their threats and pronouncements is a key step toward that goal of control. But human ego being what it is, the arrow of instrumentality is quickly reversed. Governments soon take for granted that they enjoy trust and credibility, and think that is why they remain in power.

It is therefore not surprising that governments which are blind and deaf to public opinion attempt to get away with bald denials and incredible excuses. A good part of our government actually thinks people believe them.

The irony then is that in refusing to say anything more than “scheduled maintenance”, this curt handling of the incident only slashed its credibility. The tiny hack also pricked the government’s aura of invincibility, even though it broke into just an inconsequential part of government mouthpiece Straits Times’ blogsite – with a readership of what? thirty-four? — yet by doing so, provoked the outsized, panicky response that it did.

And doubling the irony, the hacker didn’t even need to follow up and fell government websites. The government did it for him/her, in the most public way possible.

* * * * *

One panicked response came from a a former Nominated Member of Parliament, Calvin Cheng. Although supposed to be unaffiliated to any political party, Calvin Cheng had a Young People’s Action Party history, the subject of an article by Ng E-Jay on July 2009.

In a furious response to my previous post, which he labelled a “repulsive article”, he said I was “encouraging acts of violence and criminality”.
One particular line from his short Facebook post was this:

This repugnant blogger then asks “That even if you are victimised by a brutish government, you should go no further than respectful and polite conversation?”
My answer to this is yes. Because this is what being a civilised society is about.
​

Gee, what part of “brutish government” does he not understand?

An earlier part of his post could have done with some intelligent forethought before penning his outrage. In this part, he begins by quoting from me:

“That said, some tactics cause a lot more collateral damage than others. Terrorist bombings or bus hijacks have a tendency to kill and maim innocent people, for example. If we have to draw a line somewhere, it should be on the basis of how well-targeted that choice of tactic is”
- So he is saying that it is ok to kill and main [sic] politicians, if the target is well chosen? Is he inciting murder and political assassinations?
​

Actually, history is replete (“replete” is not even adequate a word, given the millions of examples) with instances when people have killed in well-targetted fashion and few today would think it was the wrong response. If Claus von Stauffenberg had been successful in his attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, we would be hailing him as a hero today. No one is too concerned about the anti-Mussolini partisans who killed the Italian dictator in 1945. Assassinations aren’t always killings of good leaders; much depends on context.

Moreover, “well-targetted” is an internationally accepted consideration in rules of war. Every soldier (including Singaporean ones) is taught that there will be times when he has to kill, and that generally speaking, it is acceptable if it is an enemy combatant that is attacking us. Millions have been killed in various wars in this “well-targetted” way and while we grieve for the loss, we can also understand how and why the tragedies came about. I doubt if any sane person would say that if enemy soldier is firing at you, you shouldn’t shoot back.

Sometimes, the other side hasn’t even begun shooting. Read up the how snipers were told to kill three Somali hijackers (said to be teenagers) in the Maersk Alabama hijacking. Were the snipers wrong to do as they did?

One lazy distinction is to say that when someone is given orders by a state to kill, it is alright, but no private person can do so for what he feels is a personal cause. That’s a very dangerous reduction, if you ask me. Through history, states have been far less than noble. Some have been downright evil. Much of history is about struggles that inevitably involve violence, sometimes preplanned, sometimes not, to secure freedom or progress, e.g. the innumerable slave rebellions in American history; the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, which though meant to be peaceful, was repeatedly punctuated by rioting.

Soweto uprising, 1976

At the same time, we need to beware how history is revised by victors to cast the vanquished’s aims and methods as illegitimate, and their own acts of violence as a justifiable route to their shining ascendency.

“Nothing justifies violence and acts of criminality,” wrote Calvin Cheng.


Facebook exchange between Andrew Loh and Calvin Cheng, Monday 4 Nov 2013, around 15:00h

Beware too how the presently powerful do the same to less powerful groups that contest their position, among which is classification of acts of resistance as criminal. Read Jothie Rajah’s book, in which she described how, in order to suppress opposition party Barisan Sosialis’ attempts to get their message out to the people (i.e. by sticking posters up in public places, since the press had been controlled), Singapore’s People’s Action Party government made “vandalism” as they called it, a caning offence.

I think it is important that Singaporeans become more capable of critical thinking, hard as it may be in an environment wherein thunderclaps of self-righteous government-speak issue daily. One lesson we can take from this Calvin Cheng post is that mouthing uninformed, unreflexive responses to what is really a highly context-dependant and historically-subjective issue — the issue being the morality of acts of resistance — only reveals an embarrassing simple-mindedness.

 

[makapaaa]

http://www.techinasia.com/leaked-re...site-outages-routing-issues-hardware-failure/

[h=1]IDA blames outage of Singapore government websites on ‘routing issues’, ‘hardware failure’[/h]

• November 4, 2013
• at 1:47 pm
• by Terence Lee

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<!-- end article header --><section class="entry-content clearfix" itemprop="articleBody">Updated with statement from IDA issued on November 4.

An incident report (embedded below) purportedly by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) has determined that “routing problems” from an unnamed Internet Service Provider (ISP), along with the hardware failure of an internet router, were the causes of the massive outage that took down over 19 government websites last Saturday. The report did not state if human error or hackers were involved.
The document, uploaded by an unknown person, says that GDC1, an internet connection service used by many government websites, called for an urgent scheduled maintenance on November 1 from 1pm to 3pm to test “the implementation of a security solution for internet access”.
However, things started to go wrong during the test. When the internet connection was swung from its primary to secondary link, a “routing problem” was discovered on the side of the Internet Service Provider, which caused the swing to fail.
But when the internet connection was reverted back to the primary link, the internet router experienced a hardware failure. Even though a replacement router was eventually used, it had difficulty connecting to the ISP.
This disrupted government internet systems and services that are hosted at GDC1, starting from November 2 at 3pm. It also impacted the government’s Domain Name System, which meant that when users key in a web address, the system was unable to match it to the respective website.The routing issues were resolved by 5.21pm on the same day.
IDA is currently waiting for an incident report from the ISP to explain what caused the routing and connection problems. The agency did not explain if hackers were able to gain access via a backdoor through the internet router, and use that vulnerability to disrupt the internet service.
In response to Tech in Asia’s queries, IDA has issued a press release stating that their maintenance was a response to the declared threats by a hacker called The Messiah to wage war against the Government’s IT infrastructure. The timing certainly wasn’t coincidental: The warning was uploaded on YouTube on October 29, just a few days before the “urgent” scheduled maintenance.
The same hacker has also said that he will be making a virtual protest on November 5 together with the Millions Mask March event. The March is a protest movement with a mission of promoting “fairness, justice, and freedom”.
IDA also confirmed several facts that were in line with the incident report. These include a maintenance from 1pm to 3pm which led the discovery of a fault that affected selected government websites, as well as the outage’s cause being a combination of a routing issue and a hardware failure.
The government agency added that maintenance will continue in the next few days. As a result, some government websites may continue to face intermittent issues.
Leading up to tomorrow, Anonymous hackers in Asia have been on a warpath to disrupt public and private sector websites. They took down dozens of government websites in the Philippines, and followed that up by defacing 170 websites in Australia. While all of them claim to be from the same collective, it’s likely that these cracks are performed by different sub-groups.
IDA-report-Service Outage-2Nov2013.pdf by Latisha Carr
<iframe id="doc_7164" height="960" src="//www.scribd.com/embeds/181125161/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-18y4hmmxif4lkdrh4y1z&show_recommendations=true" frameBorder="0" width="720" scrolling="no" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="0.706896551724138"></iframe>
(Editing by Josh Horwitz)
</section>

 

[makapaaa]

 

[methink]

Yes...We demand transparency and accountability from our very "righteous" gahmen?