Hacking, digital security, chip and pin, English Ranter's email, PayPal, and a bunch of fucking idiots (as usual)
Whilst checking my English Ranter email account yesterday, I was interested to see that I had received an email from PayPal, the online money transfer system.
The email was a bit of a shock, since it told me my PayPal account had possibly been hacked. It was even more of a surprise since I have never given PayPal that email as a contact.
I set up my PayPal account three years ago.
I set up EnglishRanter@aol.com three months ago, and I haven't been anywhere near my PayPal account since.
While I try and work out what the fuck's going on, two news stories this week show the vulnerability of the new digital era - one we are being sold will bring us security not only in our dealings privately, but our public safety.
In the UK, "Chip and Pin" has replaced the signature as identification because of the problems of credit card fraud.
Yet Shell garages this week have now suspended their Chip and Pin service because of a suspected fraud at 650 of their petrol stations across the UK.
Surprise, surprise, the infallable is indeed fallable.
Except while before the frauds were common, but one-offs, now the fraud is digitally systematic, robbing thousands of innocent consumers simultaneously across one system.
And so we move on to the case of Gary McKinnon, the UK citizen soon to be deported to the US to face a crime of hacking into sensitive US military security data, which he claims was accessible without the use of a password.
Once he was in, he just couldn't stop looking.
It's virtually impossible in most Western countries to live a normal life - one accepted by the institutions that rule us - without being part of the computerised processes that govern them.
With the introduction of digital camera recognition, and the use of CCTV cameras, and ID cards, soon our freedoms will depend on the data within these systems.
This Orwellian nightmare is made all the worse by the fact that the people who are making the legislation for this do not understand the systems they are being sold.
Yes, sold.
Just like you or I, governments are pestered by private companies claiming to have the digital answer to the complex social and security issues facing our societies.
Men in sharp suits with computers that work and haircuts that don't, sit there in shiny shoes creating digital images of politicians faces, and then in carefully set demonstrations show how their software, their hardware, and their fucking sales bullshit can solve the problems of terrorism, crime, disorder and tax evasion.
Meanwhile, the rest of us, consumed with jobs that take away our freedom to think, indulge in the electronic community in a bid to resolve the chaos that these processes put upon our lives.
Online makes it easy because doing it any other way has now become so fucking difficult.
And then someone like Mr McKinnon comes along, and deliberately or not, by pushing a few of the right buttons has access to stuff that he really shouldn't.
Has no one considered that while stuff like digital fingerprinting or face recognition may work, it doesn't work if the terrorists have superior hacker skills, and when the digital number the fingerprint produces appears, a green light comes on rather than a red one?
Just as the personal chip and pin numbers used by faithful consumers meant nothing to the machines in the Shell garages, the digital security revolution is just an illusion.
It is the King's New Clothes.
It doesn't really exist at all, any more than the security guards at the door of the World Trade Centre or ID cards worn by the people that worked there existed on 9/11.
We are heading into a society where databases, commissioned by keen-to-look-modern politicians are paid for by our taxes, and then either poorly run or simply cracked by those with the right minds and determination to do it.
They leave us in a vulnerable position.
If we don't understand the technology, and neither do our politicians, and police, and taxmen, and immigration officers, then will they believe the technology, or us, as human beings, when things go wrong?
This is more than Orwellian because Orwell only believed that technology would be the tool of a totalitarian state to keep people in check.
In fact, it is a tool sold by sharks to bumbling fools that could not only destroy the freedom of the individual, but lull us into a false sense of security to be capitalised upon by the hacker.
If Mr McKinnon can get in, what chance a multi-millionaire like Osama Bin Laden hiring the right guy to take a look?
Hackers should be the heroes in this case, not the villains.
Meanwhile I've got to go and sort out this fucking PayPal mess.
You ain't my Pal. But you do make me Pay.
I am not a free man.
I am a number.
The email was a bit of a shock, since it told me my PayPal account had possibly been hacked. It was even more of a surprise since I have never given PayPal that email as a contact.
I set up my PayPal account three years ago.
I set up EnglishRanter@aol.com three months ago, and I haven't been anywhere near my PayPal account since.
While I try and work out what the fuck's going on, two news stories this week show the vulnerability of the new digital era - one we are being sold will bring us security not only in our dealings privately, but our public safety.
In the UK, "Chip and Pin" has replaced the signature as identification because of the problems of credit card fraud.
Yet Shell garages this week have now suspended their Chip and Pin service because of a suspected fraud at 650 of their petrol stations across the UK.
Surprise, surprise, the infallable is indeed fallable.
Except while before the frauds were common, but one-offs, now the fraud is digitally systematic, robbing thousands of innocent consumers simultaneously across one system.
And so we move on to the case of Gary McKinnon, the UK citizen soon to be deported to the US to face a crime of hacking into sensitive US military security data, which he claims was accessible without the use of a password.
Once he was in, he just couldn't stop looking.
It's virtually impossible in most Western countries to live a normal life - one accepted by the institutions that rule us - without being part of the computerised processes that govern them.
With the introduction of digital camera recognition, and the use of CCTV cameras, and ID cards, soon our freedoms will depend on the data within these systems.
This Orwellian nightmare is made all the worse by the fact that the people who are making the legislation for this do not understand the systems they are being sold.
Yes, sold.
Just like you or I, governments are pestered by private companies claiming to have the digital answer to the complex social and security issues facing our societies.
Men in sharp suits with computers that work and haircuts that don't, sit there in shiny shoes creating digital images of politicians faces, and then in carefully set demonstrations show how their software, their hardware, and their fucking sales bullshit can solve the problems of terrorism, crime, disorder and tax evasion.
Meanwhile, the rest of us, consumed with jobs that take away our freedom to think, indulge in the electronic community in a bid to resolve the chaos that these processes put upon our lives.
Online makes it easy because doing it any other way has now become so fucking difficult.
And then someone like Mr McKinnon comes along, and deliberately or not, by pushing a few of the right buttons has access to stuff that he really shouldn't.
Has no one considered that while stuff like digital fingerprinting or face recognition may work, it doesn't work if the terrorists have superior hacker skills, and when the digital number the fingerprint produces appears, a green light comes on rather than a red one?
Just as the personal chip and pin numbers used by faithful consumers meant nothing to the machines in the Shell garages, the digital security revolution is just an illusion.
It is the King's New Clothes.
It doesn't really exist at all, any more than the security guards at the door of the World Trade Centre or ID cards worn by the people that worked there existed on 9/11.
We are heading into a society where databases, commissioned by keen-to-look-modern politicians are paid for by our taxes, and then either poorly run or simply cracked by those with the right minds and determination to do it.
They leave us in a vulnerable position.
If we don't understand the technology, and neither do our politicians, and police, and taxmen, and immigration officers, then will they believe the technology, or us, as human beings, when things go wrong?
This is more than Orwellian because Orwell only believed that technology would be the tool of a totalitarian state to keep people in check.
In fact, it is a tool sold by sharks to bumbling fools that could not only destroy the freedom of the individual, but lull us into a false sense of security to be capitalised upon by the hacker.
If Mr McKinnon can get in, what chance a multi-millionaire like Osama Bin Laden hiring the right guy to take a look?
Hackers should be the heroes in this case, not the villains.
Meanwhile I've got to go and sort out this fucking PayPal mess.
You ain't my Pal. But you do make me Pay.
I am not a free man.
I am a number.
posted by ENGLISH RANTER at Friday, May 12, 2006
3 Comments:
instead of punishing him, they ought to employ him! if he can get in, and get caught, how many are in there and not getting caught?
me and the wifey were the other month, some twat cloned one of our cards and emptied our account, and it took the bank weeks to admit we had done no wrong!
Be careful with the Pay Pal stuff - there are millions of fraudulent phishing attempts every day using the names Pay Pal/Ebay/ Big name banks.
I have never had a pay pal account - never had an Ebay account - yet they still write to me demanding I change my details and/ or confirm my bank account - yeah right (NOT).
I don't get any dodgy PayPal mails, but Wife does. And it was so obvious chip and pin was going to go tits-up. A signature is surely more difficult to forge well by the average bloke on the street than a number is to access.
Post a Comment
<< Home