Category Archives: Writing

Writing

Connex Code Broken!

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After my experiences this morning I think I can confidently say I’ve broken Connex’s secret code – see what they really mean when their website says:

All services are running normally.

is this:

  • No overhead power working for trains
  • No trackside power for the signalling system
  • Trains replaced by buses
  • Not enough qualified running staff at the station where the buses terminate to drive the train that’s waiting to take people to the city

Silly me, there was I thinking it meant that I could get into work in just one hour, rather than two..

DNA evidence not always what it seems to be

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Bruce Schneier has posted a link to a story about the German Police having an interesting time with DNA analysis of a series of murders due to a consistent false positive result; Bruce writes:

The German police spent years and millions of dollars tracking a mysterious killer whose DNA had been found at the scenes of six murders. Finally they realized they were tracking a worker at the factory that assembled the prepackaged swabs used for DNA testing.

I hope this gives pause for thought to those who think that programs like CSI reflect reality and that DNA profiling is always right..

The snooping dragon: social-malware surveillance of the Tibetan movement

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Shishir Nagaraja of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Ross Anderson of Cambridge University have published a very interesting paper called “The snooping dragon: social-malware surveillance of the Tibetan movement” (abstract, full report) on how agents of the Chinese government managed to infiltrate the computer network of the Dalai Lama’s organisation through ingenious social engineering and gain access to intelligence information that could lead to peoples arrest and possible execution.

It’s a very interesting report and points out that the techniques used are within the reach of motivated individuals as well as government intelligence agencies and ponders how much less well known organisations can cope with such attacks; it also lends weight to the sage advice offered in Ross Andersons “Security Engineering” book. Both are well worth a read, even for those of us whose network security is not a literal matter of life or death.

iiNet pulls out of Australian censorship pilot

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I know iiNet always said they were only going to participate to show that this couldn’t work, but now they’ve decided it’s not even worth doing that given recent developments..

“It became increasingly clear that the trial was not simply about restricting child pornography or other such illegal material, but a much wider range of issues including what the Government simply describes as ‘unwanted material’ without an explanation of what that includes.” “Everyone is repulsed by, and opposed to, child pornography but this trial and policy is not the solution or even about that.”

Hooray..

This is completely nuts

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Excuse me – but can someone unbreak Australia ? (…and no, that’s not an invitation to the Liberal/National party, you introduced this in the first place and would just screw it up even more).

On 16 March 2009, the Australian Communications and Media Authority added Wikileaks to their blacklist, and threatened anyone linking to the site with $AU11,000-a-day fines. The site will be blocked for all Australians if the mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme is implemented as planned.

Yada yada yada..

You’ve got to wonder what sort of blacklist has the website of a Queensland dentist on it – I know people are afraid of dentists but this is taking it a bit far..

Apparently you can get fined $11,000 a day for linking to a page that you’re not allowed to know is banned, it makes the EU’s secret ban on tennis racquets (ok, blunt instruments) on planes seem almost tame..

For useful insights see Brendan Scott’s blog on the topic, and this one on the leaking…

Another Melbourne Earthquake (Updated)

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I missed this one (unlike the last one), but according to Geoscience Australia there was a magnitude 4.6 quake, again around Korumburra (USGS info here).


View Larger Map

There’s an ABC news story just been created about it, and also a Geoscience Australia seismograph for it (cached locally as the version on the server disappears after 90 days).

Ironically this occurred during a talk at a conference in the Melbourne Docklands (V21) about the use of new media during the last earthquake.. 😉