For a change, the Chinese government have decided to impose their holier-than-thou ideals on the public by preventing access to common social networking sites, including twitter.com

Not happy with just blocking Blogger, YouTube and a plethora of others, the Great Firewall of China has put a stop to Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Live.com, Hotmail.com and others too. I’m guessing that China are looking to slowly remove Chinese social networking & reduce communication generally online, in a hope to stop this pesky freedom of speech stuff.

You may remember an article I wrote previously about China’s efforts to stifle freedom of speech, after YouTube and a few other video sites were “unplugged” from China’s network overnight – and it seems now that things are getting worse. Come on China! What are you afraid of? A revolution?!

The BBC demonstrated that by acquiring some software from chatrooms on the internet, they were able to set up their own botnet and take control of 22,000 user’s PCs.

Apparently the BBC are voicing that as this was not done with "criminal intent" it’s not illegal – and that no personal information was obtained from the slave machines.

I’m a little shocked, I must admit. When has a TV corporation had the power to take it on themselves to hack thousands of computers and then in the same breath say it’s not illegal? Just the mere fact that the BBC took control, means they have broken the law. They have unlawfully obtained use of equipment that they didn’t pay for, don’t pay the electricity bill for & don’t pay the user’s ISP for use of the bandwidth. Stealing, as far as I have been aware has always been a criminal activity – and it doesn’t matter if you dress this with "criminal intent" or not. And if it’s not stealing, then it’s a breach of privacy in the most basic form – you have the right to use your own property without interference from anyone else.

So what happens next? I think if you were one of the 22,000 users that had their PCs hijacked – maybe you should send a letter to your local MP, or perhaps contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I know that’s the route I would be taking. Read the BBC article here.

Proof XKCD style, if you needed it, that the weakest link in any security solution is YOU!

A significant part of the British government has spoken out against the recent surge of recording and tracking the general public’s whereabouts and communications.

CCTV cameras, databases recording emails, SMS communication and Internet traffic have all been in the news lately, and covered in some depth on Tech Snake. And it appears that government officials have also taken note on the intrusions into civic liberty.

Read all of this article…

As detailed two days ago, a serious security flaw was highlighted for Internet Explorer. If you do not have Automatic Updates turned on (which I would strongly suggest) you can visit Microsoft’s site to apply the patch manually here to make sure your system is patched and up to date.

Users of Internet Explorer are being urged to switch to a different browser in a bid to escape a serious zero day flaw.

Internet Explorer 5, 6 and 7 are all shown to contain the flaw that could potentially allow somebody access to your computer. Admittedly, if you stick to well known websites you should be relatively safe, although Trend Micro Anti-Virus estimate 10,000 websites have already been compromised – with many more to follow after the flaw has been made public.

So maybe now is the push you need if you’re still using Internet Explorer, to perhaps switch to a more secure alternative? Firefox, Chrome or Opera (or even Flock) are alternatives that are actually faster and more web standards compliant than Internet Explorer also, so it’s a win-win situation. If however you don’t have a choice and you’re stuck with Internet Explorer, make sure that the browser is put into it’s high security mode (Tools menu, Internet Options, Security Tab, Internet – set the slider to “High”) and also make sure you only stick to websites you know and trust.

That’s the conclusion I came to, after finding an article on silicon.com. In an interview with Detective superintendent Charlie McMurdie, the police force in the UK are looking to create some kind of magical device that can be used like a "computer breathalyser."

The device would look on somebody’s PC for any illegal activity, such as illegal file downloads, or information on fraud. Or at least that’s what the police believe – I feel a little differently about it though, as you would expect by now..

Read all of this article…

Portsmouth, UK, is the first local authority to install a system that can detect suspicious, and possibly criminal behaviour. Dubbed “Smart” CCTV, the system’s software looks for suspicious acts and alerts its human operators if it spots anything.

I guess the system, as long as it’s backed up by people, is a good idea – after all it’s doing nothing different than the operators did before – other than allowing them to work more efficiently. Of course you can argue one way or the other if CCTV generally is a good idea, from a privacy standpoint. You can’t dispute the facts of fallen crime rates where they are used though. Reported by the BBC, the system is on trial initially pending review by Portsmouth Council.

The old fort, which it’s owner (Roy Bates) declared a principality – although the UK still claim it’s within their waters – was involved in hosting data off-shore, in an attempt to circumvent internet hosting laws in most countries.

For the last couple of days, however, the main website for "HavenCo" is not hosted on Sealand anymore. This almost certainly points to the end for HavenCo after a troubled recent history. Although the idea initially is pretty good, it’s such a niche market that the customer base must have been pretty small to begin with. Couple that with the reality that any traffic that flows through the Sealand servers, also flows through the UK, and it seems less and less attractive.

Personally, I’ve always seen Sealand as a bit of a quirk. And once the novelty wears off (worn off?), it’s just an old heap of bricks in the middle of the channel.

PC World reports today that the once full-proof wireless encryption standard, WPA, has been partially cracked by Erik Tews and Martin Beck – two researchers which are due to make an appearance in the PacSec applied security conference next week.

Erik Tews was involved previously with developing new ways to crack the older, and shown to be weak, WEP method of wireless security. He has now developed an attack, along with Martin Beck, that can compromise the TKIP protocol within 15 minutes – much less time than was previously thought possible.

TKIP is a wrapper protocol that surrounds the old WEP encryption, essentially turning the once weak WEP into the thought to be stronger WPA. The encryption standard hasn’t fully been cracked however as the data was decrypted from the router to the PC and not from the PC to the router. So even though the password you type in to your browser is safe, the data coming back that might contain your bank balance won’t be. I’m sure it will just be a matter of time before it’s fully broken.

For those who are worried, WPA2, the latest version, does not suffer from the same flaws, but is also not available on every router and PC. If you have the latest service pack for Windows XP, or Windows Vista, WPA2 is built in, but you’ll have to verify that your router supports it too.