* Posts by Thomas Fischer

7 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2007

Germany enacts 'anti-hacker' law

Thomas Fischer

Online Vulnerability Scanners

>>* Should fear of extradition be a factor and service be denied to German customers?<<

The law is only applicable in Germany so you will be safe if you sit in another country. Only you can never go back to Germany for a visit. At least for 35 years. Extradition is an option but then i also want the extradition of spammers ;). The cahnces of getting an extradition are slim to non-existent. The use of nessus is not illegal in the UK therefore you didn't break any laws in the UK regardless of where the target system stands. And also the server owner contracted you to do this scan.

>>* Should this new law be seen as a possible marketing tactic as nobody in Germany is now allowed to run Nessus? :)<<

Surely somebody will base marketing based on this. ;)

>>* What if the German customer is based in Germany but his server is located in another country?<<

Doesn't matter, the law is broadly enough defined so you will be busted as long as you sit in Germany when you use the tool.

God only knows what they thought when they introduced this law, but it certainly shows that the german government knows absolutely nothing about the technology. Also displayed in the suggested change of law with regards to secret online searches. I still wonder how they want to do this as there are very easy and effective methods to prevent this, which the determined terrorist will know for sure. So far they could storm into a house and size the equipment, boot the machine and read what is on the HDD. Now they will have to break very strong full HDD encryption and pre-boot authentication systems and will never read what is on the HDD. Ohhh well... stupidity never dies out.

Is like sending a suspect a letter with 'We will search your home in one weeks time'.

ISPs hijack BBC in tiered services push

Thomas Fischer

The internet was not set up with a view to distributing video

This is funny, innit?

The Internet was setup to deliver content. Video is nothing else than content, it consists of digital data as a HTML Page does or a download of an application or MP3 file.

THe problem is that the ISPs in question do not have the necessary infrastructure in place to deal with the customer demand. THis is not the problem of the user or content suppliers, it is the problem of the ISPs. So you lovely ISPs, pull your fingers out of that smelly dark place of yours and start investing profits into expanding your infrastructure. I have a 2Mb DSL connection, i pay for 2Mb so i want to use 2Mb as i see fit. But then i am also with an ISP who doesn't filter my traffic, who doesn't force me over Proxy Servers or who does impose a cap on my 2Mb/sec for which i pay. It is like buying a fast german car but then get told you can only use half the speed and half the bhp and if you drive more than 400Miles a months you lose the car.

Ridiculous...

What is also funny is that the ISPs in question are mainly reselling BT Broadband. BT has its own Internet TV offering. But even more funny is that ISPs like BSkyB (Sky Network Services) are not on the list to complain, even though they would have a real reason to kick a competitors backside. Maybe its time we get rid of this spam infested crux of the Internet that is named Tiscali, Carphone Warehouse etc. There are enough alternatives out there on the market...

Fake e-cards signal massive DDoS attack

Thomas Fischer

EasySolution (TM)

Don't click on anything that you receive from people you don't know, unless you know exactly what you are doing or if you wish to get infected with Worms, Viruses, Trojans or want your bank account emptied. Everybody stupid enough to click simply on everything without the right protection doesn't deserve any better. e-Cards are anyway the most unpersonal way to wish somebody a happy birthday or anything else. If anybody sends me one they are of my christmas list in an instant.

Indians slip on tobacco-flavoured condom

Thomas Fischer

Nicotine Replacement Therapy?

That gives smoking a cigar a complete new meaning, but helps cutting down on smoking in public. Just where there is eating involved it should be outlawed to smoke in enclosed spaces.

German bus driver objects to passenger's breasts

Thomas Fischer

To Owen Sweeney

It is the german 'Bild Zeitung', of course it is pornographic ;)

Thomas Fischer

Sod the jubs

She is gorgeous with or without huge jubs. RRRRRRRRRR Scratch me, bite me, drag me over the carpet but call me tiger.... ;)

Certainly living evidence that in Germany also gorgeous women exist.

But somehow somebody should learn a bit more german. Nowhere in this article stands that she has huge jubbs. All it says is that she showed too much cleavage but nothing about the size of her jubs. This busdriver should come to London and see how some birds dress here, or how much they don't dress. Maybe his eyes would start to water then. And not to mention the sticky versions of Playboy under his driver seat... But then this report was from the Bild... not any better than The Sun, and tomorrow we see her as Page 3 Girl.

Tom

Stolen laptops fuel industrial espionage fears for UK software firm

Thomas Fischer

Their own fault

The technology is there and if one needs theoretically 1.5 Trillion years to crack the latest Encryptions we can consider it as secure. If this company does not use this technology well then they should stop their whinging. But as almost everywhere in the UK: Security doesn't matter and there is no budget assigned to security nor do these companies employ security experts or if they do people don't listen.

And if this was a e-spionage case rather than theft of hardware then even the snippets they will find on these Laptops will be highly valuable to a competitor and a professional will have it very easy to extract data from the HDDs believed to be deleted since ages. So even after their IP was stolen they just ignore it more or less and say nobody can do anything with the data. And why the big fuzz if 'It would be difficult for the thieves or recipients of the material to gain any useful advantage or information from them.'? This tells me that there is lots more to find on these Laptops than they want to admit. The encryption software with pre-boot authentication is available for under £100 per seat, a security expert costs approximately 50k/pa, a few procedural changes. Compare this to the costs of this incident and false economy comes to mind. Geez even my PCs at home with absolutely no valuable data on them are fully encrypted. The state of IT-Security in this country is scary to say the least.