Graham Cluley

To say that the "Chinese government" is involved I think understates the situation. We know as fact that their army has invested considerable time and money in a cyberwarfare unit. And that the company that operates the Firewall is a military contractor.

When Sony was hacked a few months ago, the media couldn't wait to label it a "terrorist act" by North Korea.

I just now searched Google News for "github terrorism".

1. http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/24319/github-falls-victim-to-possible-chinese-cyber-attack

2. https://grahamcluley.com/2015/03/github-ddos-attack/

That's all, even though the evidence appears more clear that the Chinese government is involved. Whereas North Korea's responsibility was in doubt. The silence speaks volumes.

But is "terrorism" even the correct word for this? When Saddam invaded Kuwait, was that a terrorist act? Consider this quote written by a Chinese military analyst 30 years ago:

those who take part in information war are not all soldiers. Anybody who
understands computers may become a "fighter" on the network. Think tanks
composed of non-governmental experts may take part in decision-making;
rapid mobilization will not just be directed to young people; information-
related industries and domains will be the first to be mobilized and enter
the war..

(From http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/chinarma.htm)

However, the Chinese may respond by claiming this was a preemptive defense. That GreatFire.com was designed to…

"... "I think the Mac user base will end up becoming polluted by some of the same people who have been infected time and time again in the Windows environment,” Mr Cluley says. “It's mainly the same people who buy a computer primarily to download porn and visit file-sharing sites." ..."

quote from security specialist ~ http://www.grahamcluley.com

"... 'I think Apple will start to become a victim of its own success. I think hackers will see this community as a soft target.' The particularly craven hackers, phishing fraudsters and malware writers ply the trade for cash, not kicks. They follow the big fish, looking to infiltrate victims' ..."

The article author ~ http://www.bernhardwarner.com/about.html
It's always a good idea to get a picture of who writes this tripe - It's "crackers" not "hackers". Misuse of the term makes the title misleading.

It's been a long time since I've been into this, so my tastes might have changed.

But my favorites were:

Photopia, 9:05, and I-0 by Adam Cadre

The Enchanter trilogy. My first introduction to Enchanter was actually this unofficial sequel: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=x6ne0bbd2oqm6h3a, which I loved.

Slouching Toward Bedlam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slouching_Towards_Bedlam

If you like Zork, "Janitor" will make you laugh: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=utic1iedvvnnsf3a

Also have very fund memories of Humbug and Jacaranda Jim (wow it took me a very long internet search to find the names.. I forgot almost everything about what those games were about, and all I had to go on is that they were DOS executables and that the author was some anti-virus author).

https://grahamcluley.com/misc/jacaranda-jim/

https://grahamcluley.com/misc/humbug/

> My only audio recording device is my webcam and it is incapable of being in use without the light being on as far as I am aware.

You assume that the light isn't controlled by the same software, that's not always the case, the FBI has admitted this.

https://grahamcluley.com/2013/12/webcam-spying-without-turning-led-researchers-prove-possible/

I take the view that anything under software control or the control of a chip I can't open is suspect, I've taped the webcam on laptops and physically disconnected built in microphones (I use a headset, built in ones suck).

I'm not really happy about my Nexus 4 at all either, I think my next phone will be a dumb mobile.

The sad thing is that I try to avoid paranoia with this stuff but the threat landscape is so large it's practically a full time job staying up to date with whats going on.

I don't think this is a thing for two reasons :

* firstly, not many people outside the security world knows that bugs are a valuable commodity for attackers. Same thing with internal orgs diagrams which are something you can sell to economic intelligence firms.

* secondly, top-tier orgs like FAANG usually peppers a lot of telemetry around known bugs in production code in order to see if someone isn't exploiting them (or simply to better track down the root cause).

That being said, attackers are reaaaaaally interested in getting access to internal bug trackers : https://grahamcluley.com/microsoft-bug-tracking-hack/

> because users OK all that when they sign up

Reminds me of the "Facebook Security Simulator" game that was made around that time - https://www.grahamcluley.com/facebook-security-simulator/ and the term "privacy zuckering" was invented round about then to describe this UX dark pattern - https://darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern/privacy-zuckering

So while Facebook may be on safe ground here _legally_ there was still an obvious train crash coming back then; when users they tricked into sharing everything find out what they actually agreed to