Down with hackers!!

This article has been published in MIMOSMIND, a MIMOS Berhad’s newsletter, September 1999 issue. Most of the text is original as published, but I do a minor adjustment where necessary. I believe this article is still relevant as people, sometimes, not take this matter seriously enough.

Do you subscribe to free email accounts such as Yahoo!, Google Mail, Hotmail, Zdnet Mail and USA Net? I bet you are. Free web-based email services (or web mail) are a common feature on most of the portal sites. They keep visitors coming back, and this will increase websites traffic. Web mail lets you check your email from any computer that is connected to the internet. Best of all, it’s free!

Without doubt, people like the idea of a constant email address. With web mail, one can keep the same address even though there is a change in jobs, schools, or the internet service provider (ISP). For instance, if I switch from using JARING to TmNet Streamyx, my email address may change from hizamlusi@myjaring.net to hizamlusi@streamyx.com. This is true even though the ISP provides web mail service as well. But my web mail address stays the same, hizamlusi@yahoo.com or hizamlusi@google.com.

Some people also like to idea of anonymity provided by web mail. You can use whatever name you like, as long as you type in the information required by the portal sites. You can utilize words according to your taste such as ‘hantu’ as your email ID and put in ‘pokok kelapa’ as your first and second name. Somebody staying in Kuala Lumpur can type in a fictitious address, say Kuala Nerang, Kedah.

But then, what about security vulnerabilities with web mail? Is it safe from hackers – people who gain unauthorized access to computer or telecommunications systems (such as the internet and intranet) for the heck of it?

Some hackers try to obtain internet user passwords under fraudulent pretences. This is mostly done through emails with false headers, which give users the impression that the email is coming from a valid source. The email will make a request for the Internet user’s password. Users should beware of emails that ask for passwords in exchange for gifts as pirated software or pornographic pictures. Sound so stupid, but so many peoples already being cheated.

Some hackers will also try to log-on to your web mail. Several email services allow an unlimited number of log-on attempts. This means that malicious internet users can try password guessing and brute-force password attacks on account that uses those systems.

Some portal sites even ask the hacker if they require help in recalling the password. Scary huh? Thus, it is very important that internet users select passwords that make guessing game and password-cracking as difficult as possible. Your password is the first line of defence against potential hackers.

All web mail services in portal sites have policies regarding security and mass distribution of unsolicited email or spamming. However, repeated log-in attempts are not prevented. Furthermore, the user is not notified when a number of failed log-in attempts have occurred. This weakness in the system affects many internet surfers.

To circumvent this, the best thing to do at the first stage is to have an official email address with an ISP for official, business related and other important communications purposes. Use portal sites email addresses for less important messages. You can also implement the secure socket layer (SSL) protocol or other latest security solution for log-in and for accessing information. SSL encrypts the data that you send and receive from a website and has no discernible effect on your system. It protects your email privacy.

There have been additional attempts to make email increasingly private with the use of encryption technology. This technology is currently used for commercial or political purposes. For instance, online trading. Applying the technology to email is essentially similar. One uses a public-key distribution mechanism and strong encryption tools to render the text of the message unreadable.

A popular encryption program is the PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) suite, which is now available worldwide. PGP is a public key encryption system that has gained popularity for encrypting and signing email messages. Both commercial and freeware are available.

PGP was developed in the US where strong encryption tools such as this are considered military technology, and therefore not exportable except under licensed conditions. Fortunately, the program’s creator, Phil Zimmermann, put the software on a publicly accessible internet host, from which it spread around the world.

For more information about PGP, its user interface and how to use it, visit relevant websites, such as www.niser.org.my.

Mata Hari?

I like this novel because the story involves different culture and taking places across the continent; from Europe to Southeast Asia. A kind of historical saga as well.

Publisher Comments:

In the cold October of 1917 Margaretha Zelle, better known as Mata Hari, sits in a prison cell in Paris awaiting trial on charges of espionage. The penalty is death by firing squad. As she waits, burdened by a secret guilt, Mata Hari tells stories, Scheherazade-like, to buy back her life from her interrogators.

From a bleak childhood in the Netherlands, through a loveless marriage to a Dutch naval officer, Margaretha is transported to the forbidden sensual pleasures of Indonesia. In the chill of her prison cell she spins tales of rosewater baths, native lovers, and Javanese jungles, evoking the magical world that sustained her even as her family crumbled.

And then, in flight from her husband, Margaretha reinvents herself: she becomes an artist's model, circus rider, and finally the temple dancer Mata Hari, dressed in veils, admired by Diaghilev, performing for the crowned heads of Europe. Through all her transformations, her life's fatal questions — was she a traitor, and if so, why? — burns ever brighter.

Mata Hari is Malay word for "Eye of the Sun".

Novel by Douglas Chua, a must read

I read all this books by Douglas Chua. Indeed, very interesting to see Asian author in international market. Two of the books, The Missing Page and Ransom, have been restricted by KDN Johor Bahru, Johor. Want to know why, read his books.

The Missing Page (Prequel to the Crisis In The Straits)

Singapore’s sovereignty is at stake. An ancient document pushes Malaysia and Singapore to the brink of war. Chua has been described as “Singapore's Jeffrey Archer”.

Crisis In The Straits

Malaysian ambassador in Singapore is gunned down, triggering a crisis which threatens to escalate into a full-scale war between the two countries. At the heart of the row is a secret document, code-named The Missing Page. If authentic, the document would undermine Singapore’s existence as a sovereign nation.

Special agent Alex Han, a decorated hero, is the only one who knows the whereabouts of The Missing Page. Accused of murdering the vicious killer Othello and fanatical diplomat Mustapha ambassador, Alex is torn between country and family as he confronts two men, who will stop at nothing to possess the document.

The tension mounts and Malaysia invades Singapore, bringing to a head the Crisis In The Straits.

Ransom
Something strange is happening to the water in Singapore. Kerosene is mysteriously found in water tanks, farm animals are dying drinking it and a mystery diver is spotted swimming in a reservoir under cover of darkness.

Special agent Alex Han is called out of retirement by the Prime Minister on another mission to save his country. When he agrees to negotiate with a terrorist who is holding the island nation to a US$100 billion ransom, Alex discovers there is more at stake than just money. A string of mysterious deaths occur around the island as Alex races against time to save Singapore and confront a faceless terrorist.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Publisher Comments:

In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America's "free market" policies have come to dominate the world- — through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq's civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country's vast oil reserves.... Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the "War on Terror" to Halliburton and Blackwater.... After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans's residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened.... These events are examples of "the shock doctrine": using the public's disorientation following massive collective shocks — wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters — to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don't succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism — the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock — did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, "shock and awe" warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas though our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Amazon Planning E-Book Debacle

Amazon is apparently planning to release a $399 e-book reading device called Kindle on Monday. I'd have thought that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos would know better since he was around at the turn of the century, during the first e-book flop.

If the pictures posted on Engadget are remotely close to the final form of the device, I have to say that Kindle is a thing of unsurpassed ugliness. The iPhone it is not. And that's a problem: The iPhone is, in my opinion, the best e-reading device currently available. Kindle's failure to learn any lessons from the iPhone will be its doom.

Back in 1999, I spoke with IDC analyst Sean Kaldor for a PC Computing Magazine article on e-books. He said basically that no one was buying e-book reading devices.

"The fact that we don't see consumers adopting these devices en masse tells me that it's not just a device issue," he said. "It's a fundamental shift in consumer attitudes and actions that needs to happen."

Eight years later, that shift still hasn't happened.

Full story: http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/11/amazon_planning.html

Bigger book bonanza

IF you’re a book lover with groaning bookshelves at home, any store that sells books is a dangerous place to step into: because it’s so difficult to leave without buying an addition to those shelves.

Well, fellow book worms, it’s with trepidation I report that the Kinokuniya Bookstores in Suria KLCC has become even more dangerous than it used to be: it’s bigger! From about 2,000sq m, the store has expanded to more than 2,700sq m.

Full story: The Star Online