The announcement by Comodo has been sitting in my inbox for a while, but I just had a chance to start taking a look. Seems like excellent features for a great price…
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This report suggests some serious issues are afoot with security in Hong Kong:
The database contained complaints made from 1996 to 2004. As you would expect in such a database, it wasn’t just information on the complainant that was compromised, but also the name, age, gender, rank and station of the police officers against whom the complaints were made, and specifics of the complaint and the outcome, including any action taken against the officer, up to dismissal. Other index tables seemed to record the occupation of the complainant, their educational attainment, and whether they had a criminal record. Also, if the complainant had been charged with an offence, then the type of offence was recorded, and the outcome of the prosecution, including the type of sentence.
One table seemed to classify nationality into either Chinese, Mainlander, Vietnamese, Filipino, Pakistani or Others. Complaints were also categorised into causes (presumably the cause was concluded after investigation), including “tactical complaints” and “political complaints” – imagine who gets that category.
[…]
In our view, the Government will not escape blame in this episode. The IPCC secretariat apparently allowed its data to be taken off-site by a consultant, reportedly for the purpose of conversion of the database from one format used by COPA to another used by the IPCC. The person who worked for the consultant then reportedly left the consultancy, and took the data with him, storing it on the commercial server. An alternative explanation might be that the consultancy outsourced the work to him.
Ouch. Do you suppose people might just be afraid to complain about exposure of complaints?
The Register reported a funny story about a man who confused a simple mistake that led to a default page with malicious intent:
The heartland turned vicious this week when an Oklahoma town threatened to call in the FBI because its web site was hacked by Linux maker Cent OS. Problem is CentOS didn’t hack Tuttle’s web site at all. The city’s hosting provider had simply botched a web server.
This tale kicked off yesterday when Tuttle’s city manager Jerry Taylor fired off an angry message to the CentOS staff. Taylor had popped onto the city’s web site and found the standard Apache server configuration boilerplate that appears with a new web server installation. Taylor seemed to confuse this with a potential hack attack on the bustling town’s IT infrastructure.
“Who gave you permission to invade my website and block me and anyone else from accessing it???,” Taylor wrote to CentOS. “Please remove your software immediately before I report it to government officials!! I am the City Manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma.
It just gets better from there. Definitely worth a read. And then there is a complaint from Tuttle to The Register for reporting on the story, and slew of related reader comments.
Compare and contrast:
1) Israelis bring high-tech food to Angola
An Israeli company is using the latest water-saving technology to grow fruit and vegetables in Angola, which imports much of its food after 27 years of civil war. […] The farm was set up at the end of the war in 2002 and has been harvesting tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, mangoes, melons and grapes for three years. In fact, the farm produces 35 tonnes of vegetables every week of the year, selling most of this food to supermarkets and restaurants in Luanda.
2) Farms ‘big threat’ to fresh water
Farming poses the biggest threat to fresh water supplies, according to a major United Nations report. Agriculture is consuming more water as the world population increases and as people turn to a Western diet, one of the scientists on the report said. Farms use two-thirds of fresh water taken from aquifers and other sources. The UN concludes that ending subsidies on pesticides and fertilisers, and realistic pricing on water, would reduce demand and pollution.
So, artificially low prices on water are creating demand that far outstrips supply, leading the earth towards a security disaster. Only when water becomes a highly valuable commodity does innovation occur, leading to more appropriate controls designed to for long-term availability and scalability.