With everything that I’ve been working on personally and the presence of a new blog that has yet to have much published, I’ve found myself looking for ideas that help me both write about technology while reading more on the topic to expand my horizons. Since the internet can often times feel like fleeting moments of gold in a deluge of nonsense, I thought it’d be helpful to share a few of the better reads that I find and give a bit of background on each. The goal is to do this weekly or bi-weekly. How that pans out largely depends on other work that I have at the time but I’m excited at the prospect of sharing the fascinating things that I see.
MIT Technology Review - When Chinese hackers declared war on the rest of us
LINK: https://jnsn.link/U-pZGY37
The first article of the week comes from MIT Technology Review and it digs into a bit of the backstory behind the 2015 DDoS of GitHub that took out the whole service several times over the period of a week. With hindsight, we begin to get a sense of the attackers responsible for grinding development to a standstill for many of us: China. Ultimately, it looks as if we were all collateral in an attack centered around disrupting the availability of a software package that assisted with evading detection at the Great Firewall while also reminding the Western world what happens when they help Chinese citizens evade surveillance.
ArsTechnica - “Ghost guns,” underage sex, and the First Amendment: Defense Distributed’s legal saga
LINK: https://jnsn.link/UgMyVQ1E
The toothpaste is out of the tube and we’re all now acutely aware of the fact that you can 3D print gun components. The company responsible for bringing this to the foreground and ensuring that we are all listening, Defense Distributed, is also entrenched in three different court battles. Most curiously, they’re deeply interested in dodging two of them altogether although they’re making trailers for the third. In any case, all three of them will help shape the company’s future yet and the rollercoaster of a ride is one that is definitely worth a read.
Gizmodo - How Cartographers for the U.S. Military Inadvertently Created a House of Horrors in South Africa
LINK: https://jnsn.link/vKHkwR9-
I suppose that I’ve always taken IP geolocation with a grain of salt, trying to convey to others that they should exercise the same caution. Seeing another perspective on this shows that it’s not always the case when individuals are trying to reconcile other things drawing them to the geolocation process. This is the story of a couple in South Africa who had over a million IP addresses pointing to their backyard, leading to a series of unfortunate events including police raids, legal threats and tons of vigilantes trying to recover stolen goods on their own. This may be my read of the week, coming in from longform.org.
Brian Krebs - 773M Password ‘Megabreach’ is Years Old
LINK: https://jnsn.link/6_-K3L_M
We had heard of a bombshell leak just a bit earlier involving 773 million unique emails and 21 million unique passwords. It sent a small shockwave throughout and we started feeling a bit like our hair was catching on fire. Fortunately, it has been determined that the data isn’t new rather is a collection of older sources. This is a helpful read about the seller that caught everyone’s attention as well as the emphasis on email password security above all other services.
WIRED - A Worldwide Hacking Spree Uses DNS Trickery to Nab Data
LINK: https://jnsn.link/cVZSBUSH
A short but sweet layout of a current run of DNS hijackings tracing back to Iran. DNS is unfortunately a rather easy pressure point for the internet system as it stands. This is by its design which creates the low hanging fruit for attackers to grab. Fortunately, this isn’t as bad as the bank that used the email address on the domain as a recover.
That’s it for this week. I’m likely going to try spending a bit more time combing through the happenings and just put up a small blip each week. See you all then.