Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China - NYTimes.com

Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China - NYTimes.com Activists at Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto, have discovered a massive program of surveillance against Skype in China. Specifically the Chinese are monitoring instant message traffic on Tom-Skype, a joint venture between eBay (the owner of Skype) and a Chinese wireless operator.

It looks like all of the text messages passing through the service are scanned for key words of interest to the Chinese government. This program captures both messages within the Tom-Skype network and between that network and the rest of the Skype network.

This is yet another compelling argument for using strong encryption to prevent interception of message content. People in China can avoid this surveillance by using the non-chinese version of Skype, and using a VPN to get the communications safely out past the Chinese scanners.

Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks - NYTimes.com

Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks - NYTimes.com I held off a while before blogging about this to see a bit of the analysis come in after the initial flush of opinion. It seems clear that a cyber attack of some kind did take place against Georgia. It also seems clear that it was Russian in origin. It further seems clear that it was timed to coincide with the Russian land assault. It is an interesting characteristic of cyber warfare that it is almost impossible to determine if this was actually government controlled, directed, sponsored, or simply a independent sympathetic effort. It is hard to rule out a scenario like support from patriotic cyber criminal organizations. There is at least some evidence that such a scenario played at least some part in the attack. Because Georgia is such a minimally wired country, the actual impact of the attacks was negligible. I would assume there are few significant connections between Georgia and the rest of the Internet. If so, they should have been able to unplug from the rest of the net while deciding how to react. A country like the US or a nation in Europe or much of Asia would be much harder pressed  to disconnect because of the tremendous diversity of international interconnections. Such countries are also much more vulnerable because they rely on the Internet for many critical functions. Additionally, enormous economic damage would result from such an attack.

Chinese Bloggers Scale The Great Firewall In Riots Aftermath - WSJ.com

Chinese Bloggers Scale The Great Firewall In Riots Aftermath - WSJ.com In a triumph of low tech, Chinese bloggers are evading the Chinese national censorship system by simply converting their posts to read right to left rather than left to right.Clearly this is only a short term solution, and the government will adapt quickly, but it shows again how brittle these censorship systems are. 

The strength and weakness of Internet activism

Fledgling Rebellion on Facebook Is Struck Down by Force in Egypt - washingtonpost.com  For a short time Facebook became the center of a fledgling activist movement in Egypt. Over 74,000 people registered on a Facebook page devoted to this issue. It became the primary communications path for this group, and enabled its explosive growth. It also contained the seeds of its rapid unwinding and the arrest and beating of the creator of that page.To me this is yet another example of the "On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog" syndrome. People feel so comfortable in front of their computers, they will say and do things they would fear to do in public or face to face. Facebook is in no way anonymous, nor does it claim to be. While there are many tools that could have enabled these people to operate and organize anonymously, there is no evidence that they used any of them.The Internet is very powerful, but it is also very public. People wishing to use it in repressive countries need to take special care to protect themselves and their visitors. 

Chinese DOS Attack on CNN called off

CNN to go dark 19 April 2008 1200 GMT according to Chinese Hackers | IntelFusionIn case anyone thinks cyber warfare is a myth, this is more evidence of its reality. It appears that a non-governmental group of Chinese hackers were planning to take down CNN as a protest against their perceived western bias in coverage of Chinese issues. Evidently news of the plans spread too far, and it was called off. 

Security guide to customs-proofing your laptop

Security guide to customs-proofing your laptop | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.comDeclan writes a witty and informative piece on securing a laptop against legals searches without cause at border crossings. 

Yahoo posts pictures of wanted Tibetans

Yahoo and MSN helping to root out Tibetan rioters | The ObserversYahoo China posted pictures of "most wanted" Tibetan protestors on Yahoo! China's home page. Cooperation with lawful process in a repressive country is bad enough, here they are actively collaborating. Yahoo!'s claim that this was done by Yahoo! China, not by the Yahoo! mother-ship, seems disingenuous at best.Active support of censorship and oppression is clearly unethical. If this is not clearly on the wrong side of the line, then what in the world is?

Finnish government blacklists 'free speech' site.

Finnish government blacklists 'free speech' site | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.comHere is another Declan article that deserves more attention. In this case the Finnish government is censoring a website for publishing a list of websites he discovered to be on a secret censorship black list compiled by the Finnish government. Censoring someone for trying to speak out about censorship is almost always a bad idea. As one might expect, free speech advocates around the world have mirrored the black list so many times and in so many places, it will be just about impossible for the Finnish government to contain the spread. 

Wikileaks domain name yanked in spat over leaked documents | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com

Wikileaks domain name yanked in spat over leaked documents | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.comDeclan does a really good job here of discussing a fascinating case. WikiLeaks is a Wiki based website designed to enable completely anonymous posting of tips and leaked documents. It is focused around enabling disclosure of information from repressive countries.A US court recently ordered WikiLeak's domain name registrar to disable their domain name because of some documents on the site about questionable off shore banking activities by a group of Swiss bankers.The real shocker here is the draconian action against WikiLeaks prior to the resolution of the claim. It is also ineffective action because WikiLeaks is openly hosted under a number of domains in a number of different countries.I am very interested to see how this story develops and whether the injunction will stand up once the details of the offending materials become clear.

Disparate national laws trample privacy expectations

Israel recently forced Google to hand over the identity of a blogger. Declan McCullagh wrote a good post covering the facts of the case. This case illustrates one of the problems caused by the international nature of the Internet. A message, article, or blog post you write (completely legally) in your country, may subject you to prosecution and punishment in another. I am not thinking here of obvious and major crimes such as fraud, child pornography, etc. (and even these are not universally criminal), but rather of more subtle speech and thought crimes.In the United States, the "truth" is an absolute defense in liable cases, while in the UK it is not (lawyers in the audience, please correct me if I am in error here). Denial of the holocaust  is protected first amendment speech in the US but not in much of Europe. Personal sharing of copyrighted materials is legal in many countries, but not the US. Think cartoons of Mohammed, the Satanic Verses, the secret teachings of the Scientologists, pictures of Burmese protests, publishing of Cryptography software. Each of these is legal in some countries and not in others.How can anyone know if their words or actions might be illegal in some country somewhere in the world. 

Yahoo seeks to dismiss China case - Yahoo! News

Yahoo seeks to dismiss China case - Yahoo! News This is a really interesting legal case. Yahoo was sued in the US by people representing some Chinese journalists who were convicted in China of violating Chinese law. Yahoo's involvement was to provide evidence from their logs and stored account data. The argument is that Yahoo should have resisted more and provided less information under US and International laws.

The people working for Yahoo in China are in a tough place because they could easily be arrested and held in contempt for failing to comply. Widespread corruption in China would almost certainly lead to extra-legal consequences for Yahoo if they resisted.

One might well criticize Yahoo for designing their systems in such a way as to be vulnerable to such foreseeable attempts to gather information on journalists and dissidents.

I think it is a mistake to trust such potentially damaging information to any company like Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc. International law will be a cold comfort if you are sitting in a jail somewhere. The only real solution is to take control of your own information. Use encryption, and anonymity to ensure that your information can not be handed over.

Hacks hit embassy, government e-mail accounts worldwide

Hacks hit embassy, government e-mail accounts worldwide

Usernames and passwords for more than 100 e-mail accounts at embassies and governments worldwide have been posted online. Using the information, anyone can access the accounts that have been compromised.

I am not sure how much needs to be said about this. In general email security is very lax. People often forget just how much information lives in their email accounts. Especially when using Exchange or IMAP type email, all of your old email archives will be compromised if your account is breached. When you consider all of the file attachments most of us get every day, there is probably little sensitive information any of us handle that is not contained in those email archives.

Cyberterrorism Trends

Cyberterrorism: By Whatever Name, It's On The Increase -- Security -- InformationWeek Yet more evidence of the use of the Internet as a part of modern asymmetric warfare. From recruiting and fundraising, to direct attacks on IT infrastructure, the Internet is now a key tool for both sides of the conflicts.

Google Wants Shareholders to Permit Censorship

CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership - Google Wants Shareholders to Permit Censorship Following up on my earlier post, it is hardly surprising that Google is not in favor of this shareholder initiative. In all fairness, it would put them in a very difficult and competitively disadvantageous position.

I will be at a conference on censorship circumvention in the UK in late May, so I should have more information and insight about this issue soon. It will be good to get outside the box and talk with others who are fighting this good fight along side Anonymizer.