Viruses have been around for a long time. In prehistoric times (i.e. before Windows XP), viruses were practically an everyday occurrence for the early adopters of the net. Nowadays with modern operating systems viruses are much rarer, due to better security design, widespread adoption of anti virus software and the advent of automatically downloaded operating system security fixes (i.e. those annoying times when your computer spits on you and says it’s going to restart on the count of ten, and there is fuck all you can do about it).
Now that computer security systems have improved, hackers now target the next weakest link in your computer’s security: you. Hackers have been studying psychology. They are learning what your weaknesses are, what makes your nervous and what makes you excited. They know how to persuade you to do something stupid.
By way of example I received the following message on Skype from a stranger named “marina_russia1″ today.
I clicked on the link on the off chance that this was some sort of missed connection with a Russian from my past. It wasn’t; I’d been lured into a Russian bride retailer’s website.
Just what I was looking for!
Social engineering was used by this spammer to pique my curiosity. He got a click out of me, where I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Similarly, social engineering techniques can be used to dupe you into installing a nasty virus onto your computer. Remember early August 2008 when your Facebook Inbox was flooded with messages from your friends which read “My friend catched you on hidden cam. You must see it!!! LOL.” Inside the message was a link to a supposed video file. A lot of people clicked it, despite their operating systems warning them the file could be dangerous. Because of your paranoia of becoming the next star wars kid, you lose your senses, and can end up behaving stupidly. Your psychology is predictable and exploitable; you are the weakest link.
Digg, a social news website where people share and discover content from across the Internet, has increasingly become an outlet for political opinion. The huge popularity of stories about Google’s recent refusal to continue censoring its Chinese search results a and AT&T’s refusal to waive the charges on SMS messages sent to Haitian disaster support organizations both illustrate this point.
Digg users strike back at AT&T's refusal to waive fees sent to Haitian aid organizations
Digg’s cornerstone functionality is the voting of stories up or down, respectively called digging and burying. Many stories get submitted every day, but only the most Dugg stories appear on the front page. In this way the Digg community collectively filter out the best and most newsworthy stories.
There is an interesting trend emerging on Digg: Digg users are beginning to digg pages which agree with their political beliefs. They are digging so as to say “yes, I agree with what this article says and I mark my belief publicly with a Digg”.
Web users are voting with their diggs, (a handy play on words also fuels this process as, intuitively, readers “dig” the idea).
Digg's users support Google's threat to move out of China
By way of example, Google yesterday announced that they will no longer comply with the Chinese government’s insistence on censoring the content of their search results within China. The Chinese government’s actions have long been a point of contention for the typical Digg user (tech savvy, gen Y, liberal) and so it’s no surprise that this news was popular with the Digg community. Many of the stories submitted received huge amount of digs despite being run-of-the-mill press releases. The x-factor for popularity wasn’t the quality of the websites themselves – it was the political appeal of the news to the Digg community.
In digging a story the politically concerned web user helps promote his cause, since every digg will increase the story’s popularity and exposure, especially since an appearance on Digg’s front page brings over 50,000 new visitors to a site in 24 hours.
Whatsmore, a digg has a more subtle effect. There is a concept in persuasion known as social norming, a type of peer pressure for ideas or behaviour. For example, if you read that 98% of people think house prices will go up this year, you are strongly influenced to think that this is so, to the point where you may doubt your original contrary (albeit correct) beliefs. By digging a story your voice is added to the collective voice of the community. 1,253 web users agree with a story – so maybe I should too. It seems illogical, but this is how many people’s minds work.
This is the future of politics. Digg has spoken.
“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”
John Perry Barlow, Founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
Say you want to have fun on the internet and break some rulez. Or just make tons of money by doing something illegal. What’s the worst that can happen to you?
Paedophilia, uploading copyrighted content, online gambling, posting furries; you name it… If it’s wrong or depraved, you can find it online. Apart from furries, states don’t tend to like this kind of stuff so they either pretend it’s not happening or they try and push you off the edge of the internetz and make you disappear. One problem though: the long arm of the law doesn’t tend to be quite long enough to stretch half way around the world, or nimble enough to creep its fingers inside your computer.
Take The Pirate Bay: a site used for sharing pretty much everything aside from STIs. The Swedish courts were like “fine, recording industry, you’ve twisted our arm. Let’s make these motherfuckers pay”. So they sued them and apparently succeeded in taking them down. But The Pirate Bay were like “Don’t worry – we’re from the internets, it’s going to be alright :- )”, and moved their servers to the Ukraine, away from Swedish jurisdiction. Remember, sharing is caring.
So the record companies are like “what’s wrong Ukraine? don’t be pussies and take them down”. But the Ukranians said “what happens in the Ukraine stays in the Ukraine, it’s not our responsibility”. In the end the pirates were like “Ukraine sucks, let’s move to Holland” so their servers are now hosted in a “bulletproof” (in legal terms) cyberbunker 120 miles from Amsterdam. Away from harm and the law’s stumpy old arm.
Principality of Sealand - HavenCo HQ
So it appears you can dodge the law simply by moving your servers to a different jurisdiction. But what happens when the stuff you’re doing is like, SUPER wrong and twisted? Some years ago, deviant web firms could approach HavenCo, a company based in the Principality of Sealand, a rogue micronation 6 miles off the coast of Suffolk. By hosting your servers there, it appeared you could make your site completely untouchable, from a legal perspective. But of what use is being untouchable when hosts aren’t allowed to access your content? Oh and did I say micronation? I meant a floating pontoon, probably uninhabited and not really recognised by any UN member state. Unfortunately, HavenCo sucked at business and disappeared without a trace.
So basically, sovereignty is futile when you can’t form part of the web. China’s great firewall illustrates this nicely. If they don’t like you, they can make sure no-one can see you. The key thing about the internet is that you can break it without touching the end-points (that is, the hosts –ie YOU- and servers –ie WEBSITES). They simply need to tell Internet Service Providers “block their bytes or we’ll fine you a zillion yuan and stick you in a dungeon” (By the way philistines, yuan is a unit of Chinese currency).
Another thing that could happen is your website stays there but they kill you via DNS poisoning, meaning that your site and it’s corresponding IP address stay the same, but routers in the intertubes can’t find you because someone has messed with the address book. That’s what happened to Vote Auction (a site which claimed to “bring democracy and capitalism closer together”, where you could auction off your vote to the highest bidder because you didn’t actually care about the US Presidential Elections and just wanted some lionca$h to buy Pokemon Gold), which was delisted when the Election Board of Commissioners failed to see the funny side of this venture.
Sometimes though, your enemies might be the playground bullies (big web firms) rather than the headmistress (the state). If Google doesn’t like you, they simply give you a “Google death penalty” so that if someone searches for “Hermes Technologies Ireland” they can be like “who?” and pretend never to have seen you. Ask the guy who tried to bring down Scientology by exposing its inner secrets (operation Clambake). Srsly.
