Archive for June, 2009

Gemalto optical reader.. What’s new?

Friday, June 26th, 2009

According to their press release Gemalto launched a new product which can read your TAN code from the website with a small device.
It works like this:

  1. The user goes to the website of his bank;
  2. The user inserts his card in to the device;
  3. The user enters his PIN, which is then verified by the device;
  4. The user points the device at his computerscreen, and is asked to verify the the transaction / login procedure on the device;
  5. When verified, the device responds with a OTP ( one-time-password );
  6. The user can login or authorise the transaction with his Username and the OTP.

I do not see what is new to me, as a user of online banking. I already have such a device, which does exactly the same thing except for the fact I do not have to point my device at my screen prior to logging in!

It would’t work for me either because my desk is unfortunatly, turned away from the window so sometimes the sun shines directly on my screen. I am pretty sure I won’t be logging in to my bank with that device until sunset…

Dutch anti-piracy foundation website DoS attacked

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Yesterday, the Dutch anti-piracy foundation BREIN has summoned The Pirate Bay founders to appear in court for their part in the file-sharing activities of the users of The Pirate Bay.
Today, hackers have performed a Denial Of Service (DOS) attack on the website of BREIN ( www.anti-piracy.nl) which brought the complete website down.
According to a spokeswoman of BREIN they plan to have the website up and running as soon as possible. She also added to say, that such an attack is highly exceptional.

Well, I have seen this coming. The Pirate Bay is one of the biggest torrent sites around, and summoning them for court probably has pissed a lot of people off…

Google streetview catches robbers

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

In September 2008 a 14 year old boy had been robbed in a street in the Dutch city of Groningen.

After he pressed charges, the police could not find the two responsible for the robbery.Until a few months ago, when the boy found himself and his robbers on google streetview.

Robbers of the 14 year old boy

He then notified the police who after identification arrested the two.

Personally, I am not a proponent of Google streetview because of the privacy issues but in this case it was good to have them at the right place at the right time.

A new way to be spammed

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Opera just released their new “Unite” browser, which is according to them revolutionary. It is not only able to browse the Internet ( as a browser is supposed to do ) but it can also serve files and web pages and stream music to others, and it lets users leave post-its on a virtual fridge. According to their website, the latter function is “open to all” which basically means everyone can leave these messages…

Let’s see how long it takes before spammers are leaving you spam post-its on your fridge…

Twitter used for recruiting Hacktivists

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

Some interesting developments on Twitter. Due to the disorder caused by the recent Iranian elections someone has decided to widen the scope of the disorder to the internet. He has asked people on twitter to help him DDoS Iranian government websites. As he stated in his Tweet, he ( and probably some others) successfully took down one website already.

But other Tweets show people don’t want this to happen. Because Iran’s Internet infrastructure is not as state-of-the-art like most western countries it could be possible theĀ  internet of Iran saturates and they have no internet at all!

It’s kind of disturbing to see how easy it is to get people motivated on twitter, for the cause of good or the bad.