WikiLeaks

The recent WikiLeaks incident will be in the history books of our children. Although US Secretary of Defense calls WikiLeaks insignificant it’s clear he lies and he does it without blinking (video: http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/wiki-fallout-quot-insignificant-quot-gates-23280280). Impressive but THIS is the biggest disaster in US diplomacy I know of and every politician who denies it lies. The first reaction of the Italian foreign minister was that it’s the 9/11 of diplomacy. Later the Italian defense department said it’s rater April fools day than 9/11 but I think the first is more appropriate. I live in Germany and this week I bought DER SPIEGEL that reported as one of the exclusive media partner extensively about the  US embassy cables in relation to German politics. It’s really scary how many spies the Americans have everywhere reporting not to the CIA or NSA but to regular US embassies! I knew that allies spy on each other but the dimensions are immense.

Nevertheless it is WRONG what WikiLeaks has done.

The first leak contained unfiltered information that have not even be reviewed by WikiLeaks before publishing. Insurgents from Afghanistan or Iraq had just to download it and analyze to plan much better attacks on US and allied troops in this region. Irresponsible!

The recent second leak is a disaster for the US diplomacy and the shock waves of it might even cause wars in future. The leak is so evil that apparently FSB (former KGB) analysts think that there might be someone behind it and Putin told Larry King at CNN about this theory in an interview (http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2010/11/30/lkl.putin.wikileaks.cnn.html). Indeed the only one who looked happy after the WikiLeaks release has been the prime minister of Israel as the US embassy cables have shown that Saudi Arabia asked the US to bomb Iran. Personally I don’t think there is someone behind the leak  in particular. Yes, some foreign secret services (of US-enemies) might support WikiLeaks but I think it was really Bradley Manning who leaked all the documents because he wanted everyone to “know the truth”.

The best analysis I have seen so far was is Y! News (originally a video by abc News: http://news.yahoo.com/video/tech-15749651/wikileaks-reverse-spying-23260436). It shows the hacker who reached out to the FBI after being contacted by a person who indicated the willingness of leaking secret documents from the US military (Bradley Manning who is facing now a sentence of 52 years in jail: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/30/wikileaks-cables-bradley-manning). It was most probably him who leaked all the documents. Not only the video known as the “collateral murderer” helicopter attack from Iraq. BTW: I remember watching the video and it only showed to me what kind of dirty war we are facing in this region where Muslim insurgents bring their children to the battlefield as human shields!!! Disgusting! The video indicated the US pilots have done something wrong. My conclusion was the contrary. They behaved just right.

I hope there won’t be any third leak as announced WikiLeaks. The organization is under heavy pressure and their website will probably vanish from the Internet in the long term (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-knocked-off-net-dns-everydns). Amazon removed it from their servers and Paypal deleted their account. DNS providers are deleting the domains from their servers. This will continue till there is nothing left of WikiLeaks website but it will be in the history books of our children for sure. Not sure in what context it will be but I hope not it won’t be something like a “prelude to World War III”. In my opinion it has the potential to be exactly that.

Edit: Like a year later I changed my opinion about the leaks a bit. The damage was limited, it helped to end the war in Iraq, influenced the Arab spring and I think history will show more benefits of it. Manning will be the Daniel Ellsberg of our time…

Conficker – is it a wash?

Is the Conficker threat just a wash? I think it is. Shame on me if my PC is going to shut down in a minute because it’s infected. But that won’t happen. Why? Because the IT department of the company I work for keeps Windows up-to-date with the latest security patches. According to IBM only 6% of PC’s are infected in the US. 31% in Europe and 45% in Asia. I thought it had Ukrainian roots but who knows… maybe it’s Chinese? BTW: Check out http://www.newgrounds.com/ – the ultimate “government approved” website of the People’s Republic of China 😉

Source: IBM: Conficker Infections Low in United States – http://www.pcworld.com/article/162339/ibm_conficker_infections_low_in_united_states.html?tk=rss_news

Edit: I found this nice info on how you can check if your computer has been infected: Eye chart can help diagnose Conficker – http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10212286-12.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Image by PressPix Photography

GhostNet

Really funny what came out about GhostNet & the Dalai Lama now – full story: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ghostnet_turning_computers_into_giant_bugs.php – it seems the Chinese hackers are really taking their job seriously – the bad thing is that the public is not aware of it! According to iDefense Labs http://labs.idefense.com/ there is a clear connection between the Chinese army and hacker groups since many years.

I’m 100% sure the cyberwar is going in multiple directions: China <-> USA <-> Europe – I remember when MicroSoft started “turning off” illegal Windows copies in China for one day – so there IS a backdoor in Windows. Encrypted files in Windows? Not a problem, it’s very well known that the NSA has the master-key. I think it’s very dangerous what these Chinese Hackers do – especially because they think it’s right. Dedicated site about “Red Hackers”: http://www.thedarkvisitor.com/

Obama’s Blackberry

I was so proud of my own Blackberry when I noticed that Omaba is also caring one on a trip to Hawaii before his inauguration. Great feeling! Is he really so addicted to his mobile phone or is this all just a marketing campaign? First it looked like he’s going to be forced to give it away but now they loaded tons of encryption software on his device to make it secure.

Sources:

http://valleywag.gawker.com/5136621/most-powerful-man-in-world-gets-most-powerful-blackberry-in-world

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/09/obamas-blackberry-devotio_n_156510.html?show_comment_id=19578516

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/22/obama-may-get-spy-proof-s_n_159926.html

Photo by: danielleking

The hero of the day

This is what I call a good pilot. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III – the guy who landed the plane on the Hudson river.

Personally I look at the pilot every time I get into a plane if I get a chance to. No kidding… and hell, I KNOW what a stall is! This is what Sally manged to avoid when lading on the water! Jesus! He did a fantastic job with landing the plane.

I’m a flight simulator fan and played these kind of games since getting my ZX Spectrum 48K homecomputer as a 9 year old child! Later on the PC I played the MicroSoft Flight Simulator, I think starting from version 3.0 (I first had a 286  then a 486 and then a Pentium and later different Athlons).

BTW: I found a video of the ZX Spectrum Flight Sim 😀 LOL !

Here is a compilation of the MS Flight Sim versions:

Today I stopped playing the “peacful” simulators and prefer something with more action! 🙂

IL-2 “Smert” Sturmovik! (the latest 1946 edition)

Wings over Europe: Cold War Soviet Invasion

Rewiring!

Great article about rewiring Yahoo!… and who is there on the second picture? My good old friend Neal Sample 😉 The father of Yahoo! 360° and the god of chief architects. Rock on m8!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10075207-2.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webware

Photo by Pragmagraphr

Obama Ads in Video Games

I think this is smart… really smart. This is the state of the art advertising. The latest and best… and the Obama campaing is using it. Respect!