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61 thoughts on “The Joys of Being an Amateur”

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  • Sunflower

    Here is a link to a very well written article about Stuxnet. It gives a good understanding of what you can accomplish through hacking if you have the resources.

    I want to see Tom Watson and Tom Lewis in the leader ball on Sunday, and Tom Watson winning.

    And what is the problem with an all male club? If crop circle excursions are arranged for female only groups, why not allow a male only golf club? This whole feminism religion is such unscientific crap.

  • dreoilin

    For shit’s sake, look at this:
    .
    “The family of Jean Charles de Menezes, the 27-year-old electrician shot dead by armed police in the wake of the failed 21 July 2005 terror attacks, say they fear their phones may have been hacked by the News of the World.

    “Scotland Yard detectives have told Alex Pereira, a cousin of the dead Brazilian, that Jean Charles’ mobile number was found in the personal files of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was hired by the News of the World and served a prison sentence for hacking members of the royal family.”
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/de-menezes-family-phones-may-have-been-hacked-2314085.html

  • dreoilin

    Avaaz are fundraising to go after Murdoch:
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    “But this [UK] is the tip of the iceberg — Murdoch is a global problem. He’s famous for dictating editorial positions to his papers. He corrupts and controls democracies by pushing politicians to back his extremist ideas on war, torture and a host of other planetary ills, and destroying the careers of politicians with smear campaigns unless they do his bidding. In the US, he helped elect George W. Bush and has most of the Republican presidential candidates actually on his payroll (see sources below). His Fox News Network spread lies to promote the war in Iraq, pushed resentment of Muslims and immigrants and spawned the right-wing tea party. Maybe worst of all, he has helped block critical global action on climate change.” [Avaaz email]
    .
    https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_rupert_murdoch_donate/?vl

  • Paul Johnston

    Craig.
    Tom Watson IMHO is one of the true greats and always will be.
    If I could play a round with anyone it would have to be him,

    Re Sunflower
    I posted the link to the stuxnet on the Bent Cops post, as I said
    Mark June 24, 2012 in your diaries folks!

  • Jon

    Ha, Larry – it’s normally you who raises that topic in the first place 🙂
    .
    Moderating is about judgement. I’ll be very slow to delete something from constructive regulars. Hot topics that are off-topic are usually not deleted, from Craig’s guideline, “be liberal” i.e. permit as much as possible.
    .
    On the other hand, anything that is abusive or designed to derail civil discussion will be removed. For example, last year we had several 9/11 theorist sock-puppets who were racist as well as disruptive – they were the reason moderation was brought in.
    .
    I should still like to see you join in constructively Larry, or perhaps you might talk to Suhayl *respectfully* about what you’d discuss on a bus. I live in hope 🙂

  • Jon

    Wow, yes – Rebekah gone. In a statement, she says they are making “honest endeavours to fix the problems of the past”. Decoded, I think that means “Holy crap, we got caught, panic!!”.

  • Sunflower

    @Paul.
    .
    “I posted the link to the stuxnet on the Bent Cops post, as I said
    Mark June 24, 2012 in your diaries folks!”
    .
    Sorry, I missed that.
    .
    @Jon
    .
    Is there a RSS feed for comments?

  • John Goss

    Thank you very much, Sunflower, for posting the link to that amazing article on Stuxnet. I worked for ten years as a technical author and take my hat off to Kim Zetter for the clarity of this informative piece. For me to finish an article of this complexity and length, in which my knowledge base is very low, is a big tribute to its author. And I loved some of the metaphors. As you say it is a very well-written article.
    The main problem with states causing mechanical malfunctions using precisely-targeted worms, puts that knowledge in the domain, and similar worms can now be created on the same principle with other targets in mind. The nuclear bomb cannot be un-invented, and neither can this malware. It is comforting to know that Symantec’s engineers and others, Liam O Murchu, Eric Chien, Ralph Langner and Nicolas Falliere, were able to get to the bottom of this attack. The safety and security of the world may rely on the detachment of multinationals from individual states. “We’re not beholden to a nation,” Chien said. “We’re a multinational, private company protecting customers.”

  • Paul Johnston

    Mod/Jon
    A question for you.
    How much automated junk comments do you get?
    I run a shed load of blogs (wordpress) for the University and yesterday whilst moving one to the new server found an unattended one had 1600 junk comments awaiting moderation.
    Oh yes it was a History one hence my rant at them last post 😉
    Also have you considered having posters being able to preview?
    Paul

  • ingo

    It takes the word of one saudi prince, twitching mouth, eyes hidden behind sun glasses, nervously working his worry beads and slightly irate, to encourage our charming lurid fawn to resign.
    It might be possible that Rupert and James are now enbroiled in a frantic sharebuying exercise to stave of a takeover of news corpse, his words last night looked like he veiled a considerable anger at loosing a few billions last week.

    Dare I predict that Rupert might not in charge of it all anymore, very soon.
    Once again thanks for the excellent moderation.

    Thanks for the update on the Ghaza bombing, Leila failed to mention rocket fire, but that could just be a ruse.

    http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/07/2011714222348698192.html

  • mary

    Does the resignation give her some sort of get out at the committee – ‘I don’t work for them anymore therefore I am not in a position (literally) to reply or answer’. Another Murdoch ruse?
    .
    Both news channels are covering Prescott mangling the English language in the red benched department of the Augean stables at the moment.

  • Jon

    Sunflower – http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/comments/feed/
    .
    You can get an RSS feed for individual posts as well. AFAIK however you can’t amend the link to get more comments – I would love to have one myself that returned the last fifty or so, but I think it’s a server/system setting I don’t have access to.

  • Jon

    @Paul, we get a fair bit of junk, but most of it is caught automatically by a spam plugin, which does a pretty good job. Stops around 40 pieces per day. I use Akismet on one of my own blogs, but sadly for personal use it is no longer free to use, afaik.
    .
    I think preview would be an excellent idea… next time I email Tim (see footer – he does the server stuff) I will mention it. However he has his work cut out fixing other things, so it may take a while, if at all!

  • mark_golding

    Talking among ourselves here’s my contribution:
    .

    SANCTIONS on IRAN – UNJUST & UNWISE
    .
    Britain supports American sanctions on Iran which I declare is unjust, unwise, selfish and endangers the lives of air passengers from a lack of aircraft spares needed for air safety.
    .
    Britain enjoyed relations with Iran since the 13C. In the 20th Century Iran’s oil was critical to Royal Navy operations esp. during WWI. Oil obviously played a major part in next World War and WWII saw Britain invade Iran in a dawn attack by HMS Shoreham on the harbour and oil terminal at Abadan. The attack quickly secured Iranian oil-fields. An agreement known as D’Arcy had ensured Britain had the benefit of huge oil concessions that effectively squandered the National indigenous wealth of Iran. This led to the nationalisation of oil resources by Mosaddegh which in turn caused tension between Iran and Britain and resulted in a campaign by Britain to enforce the previous agreement. According to ‘All the Shah’s Men’ Britain engaged the support of America’s communist witch-hunt by using the rhetoric of anti-communism to stage a CIA/MI6 coup to overthrow Mosaddegh. This coup sowed seeds of mistrust in Britain by the Iranian peoples. America in fact went further and dominated Iran’s political arena and destroyed Britain’s long relations with Iran permanently although British sales of destroyers to Iran mean’t that Iranian Naval officers were trained at HMS Collingwood pre 1979 when Britain suspended all diplomatic relations with Iran.
    .
    Sadly since around late 80’s Britain’s secret services(MI6) commenced an intensive spying program on Iran’s nuclear facilities which interestingly had progressed through the late 70’s with American proposals (Cheney/Rumsfeld) for plutonium enrichment intended to release Iranian oil for export.
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    http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/11326
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    More worryingly for the British according to [NOT FOR SOUTH AFRICA EYES] communications, a deal signed with South Africa that financed nuclear enrichment and ensured supplies to Iran prompted Britain to choke the SA government even further since Beira Patrol. Under US pressure Iran was denied enriched uranium entitled by contract from France and Germany stopped work on Bushehr after being paid $2.5 million of the total contract. Bushehr was bombed during the Iran-Iraq war and Argentina reprocessed the US enriched uranium supplied for the Tehran Research Reactor and then terminated by America.
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    Britain according to the Sunday Telegraph convened military chiefs to devise a plan to bomb Iran’s nuclear plants, but my evidence suggests this was hyperbole and Britain continued to supply arms to Iran despite the ban.
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    Britain’s relations with Iran took a further dive when 15 British serviceman on British patrol boats from HMS Cornwall that had entered Iranian waters were detained in Iran. Contrary to Murdoch press reports of abuse and torture the sailors were treated exemplarily given new suits, fine food and cigarettes. (From my own Naval sources)
    .
    The Murdoch empire keen to incite a strike on Iran (war sells papers and cements government/media relations) splashed the ‘death’ of Neda Agha-Soltan over its papers causing a viral escalation. Murdoch also I believe financed the Neda Agha-Soltan Graduate Scholarship at Queens effectively driving another nail in the coffin of British/Iran relations.
    .
    Britain has paid around £400 million to Iran in arms deals. The British army tank deal was hailed as a major coup for Britain, guaranteeing thousands of jobs at ROF plants in the industrial heartlands. Such was the importance of the scheme that in the immediate aftermath of the Iranian revolution which swept Ayatollah Khomeini to power, Britain continued to supply tank parts to Tehran.
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    Britain is very keen to resume business with Iran because of the enormous potential of the UK-Iran economic and commercial relationship to be realised. Britain has also realised that Israel has got Iran’s nuclear ambitions badly wrong and Israel’s former intelligence chief, Meir Dagan is quite correct in his analysis that Iran is not ‘galloping ahead towards a nuclear bomb.’
    .
    John Sawers needs to rethink his constant meddling with Iran – a permanent break in relations will destroy a valuable ally; in doing so the prophesy of Sir Anthony Parsons in his ‘The Pride and the Fall’ will have been realised to our loss.

  • Sunflower

    @John G “As you say it is a very well-written article.”
    .
    Yes, there are several persons commenting that this is one of the best written articles published on Wired.com, ever.

    “The main problem with states causing mechanical malfunctions using precisely-targeted worms, puts that knowledge in the domain, and similar worms can now be created on the same principle with other targets in mind.”
    .
    In principle that is a problem, in reality I doubt that is a problem. The resources needed to pull an operation like this off are so enormous that unless you are a state sponsored intelligence agency you can forget it. Actually, the Stuxnet operation is of such magnitude that it’s likely that several intelligence agencies were in cooperation for years.
    .
    Many will agree if you say the digital revolution has brought progress and prosperity. But if you look closer, you will see how the digital revolution has created tools that the people in power are now using to end the free world as we know it. Those tools are used in Information Warfare operations, not against what we are told in media are our enemies, but on us, the public.
    .
    So who is actually The Enemy of the State?

  • mark_golding

    ‘..if you look closer, you will see how the digital revolution has created tools that the people in power are now using to end the free world as we know it.’
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    Interestingly Sunflower that Peter Powers company, Visor Consultants Limited were asked by Reed Elsevier toprepare an effective crisis management plan on 7/7. LexisNexis a division of Reed bought the Florida-based company Seisint, a datamining company formed by one time cocaine dealer Mr Asher combining ChoicePoint Public Records with another company he owned. Mr Asher played a leading role in developing the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX) datamining system for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, described as a tool to help state law enforcement officials identify potential terrorists by later. Matrix was later abandoned as a result of ACLU FOI requests resulting in public pressure. LexisNexis partnered Capscan Limited to cleanse the original Post Office PAF postcode lookup file and went on to develop UK address profiling. Capscan is owned by Mr Lewin from Technion-Machon Technologi Le’ Israel and a good friend of Netanyahu.

  • XXY

    So Jon, you feel yourself justified in imposing restrictions upon Craigs invitation to “Feel free to talk among yourselves” by deleting and editing comments? Come on old chap: Fair play!

  • Jon

    @Suhayl, thanks – will check that out tomorrow.
    .
    @XXY – read my comments to Larry on 15th July, above. I only remove comments if they’re disruptive. Disagreement is fine, as has been noted several times before. The peculiar thing about light moderation is that it +improves+ freedom of speech – decent discussions and disagreements flow much more freely, without derailment, if a moderator keeps an eye on things. IMO anyway!
    .
    Incidentally the reason I deleted the first comment is that 9/11 is often brought up specifically to sidetrack whatever other discussion is going on. Craig did ask some while ago for that discussion to be kept to a particular thread (for which you’d need to google). But I accept that sometimes it will be connected to the topic in hand – I leave it alone if it is raised in good faith.
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    As I hope you can see, deciding when to intervene requires judgement. But please do stick to one nickname – it makes moderating easier.

  • XXY

    9/11 was raised as the first comment “9/11 was an inside job” for the purposes of humour. You may recall a previous thread in which as soon as those number combinations were raised, it prompted the usual “autobots” to have a go. It was a mocking goading, and also humourous in that ‘given the slightest chance of freedom of speech on the blog’, that it would be the first thing that ‘people’ raised. And, as you know yourself, 9-11 is (perhaps) THE most deeply deliberated topic that’s appeared on this blog. That plus the fact Craig gave free hand was what miffed me.

  • Jon

    I think I may have misread the intent, in that case – my apologies. I remember now – I thought it was our regular (and largely unsuccessful) de-railer who was trying to divert and annoy.
    .
    Anyway, if you can stick to the one nick, I am sure I will recognise it when going through the same process in future.

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