Cyber Terrorism (CT) and Cyber Crime (CC)

This short article that I wrote will be focusing on how serious CT and CC can be. It is slightly target for large companies because I know that one day you one of the top guns in a company.

I'm not introducing something new to the world right now. It is the same thing of what those old-time techies keep on mentioning about, cyber terrorism and cyber crime will be raising due to the importance that we give to the information technology in this modern era. As usual, people like to sabotage your most important asset. For instance in a war, the first thing that military will do is attack the most important place such as the military camp in order to cause greater suffocation to the victim.

My definition of cyber terrorism is, exactly same as terrorism but it is done in the cyber world also can be said a cyber war. The same goes to cyber crime as well, it all comes under crime using the modern day communication tools specifically computers. By the way, cyber terrorism is more dangerous compared to cyber crime where cyber terrorism includes larger amount of people.

Therefore, it is not impossible for someone to cause a serious damage in the IT world. Once cyber terrorism happens, it can cause serious communication failure that might lead to the malfunction of the whole organization. Cyber terrorism and cyber crime can happen anywhere. For example, in business environment, people could steal all your financial information thus create a network failure by attacking your company servers. Obviously, your network administrators might have done backups, but it will still take some time for your network to recover because your network administrator and computer emergency response team (CERT) need to do some analysis to know how it happened. In this gap, your company's e-mail will be down causing a communication barrier between you and your customers (applied for large operations).

What about SOHO and SME/SMI users? Well, you are still vulnerable for CT/CC attacks. Hackers can use your bandwidth and information to go anonymous in the Internet. Once they go anonymous, then, they can do anything because no one knows their identification.

Other worst-case scenarios (WCS): These are only few funny examples.

1. Setting up malicious codes in the computers at Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara causing it to automatically edit individuals’ information such as religion and gender silently. After some time, the religion and gender of the entire Malaysians will be different E.g. All Malaysians are Christian and the gender is female. This will cause serious havoc. (CT)

2. Steal health information for business purposes. For instance, the companies hire hackers to steal people’s health information from hospitals and clinics to make a decision whether the candidate can be employed or not. (Business CC)

3. Attack the TM Net Streamyx connection centers (those high-end switches) to disable internet connections for all the streamyx subscribers. This also can cause a massive lost for businesses and organizations. (CT)

Note: I’m not giving you ideas conduct CT or CC okay?

Obviously, the network administrators can detect these kinds of things but hackers still can find ways. I personally feel that these things are possible.

The problem is, as days pass by, we are giving more importance to information technology. Nowadays, everywhere we go there must be a computer for instance schools, clinics and logistics. All these are the goldmines for the hackers out there. Companies are investing large amount of money in it. However, I’m not denying the fact that computers are efficient and essential for corporations but at the same time it is vital to play safe. So, it is good to invest on security as well. For example, the usage of VoIP can be easily captured almost by anyone. Yet, most of the companies are using VoIP because it’s getting more reliable.

No matter who you are, you still have to find a solution for this problem because you are exposed as well. I repeat, a kid who knows how to use Google might cause million dollars loss to your company one day.

Remember:
“There is nothing impossible in the cyberworld anymore!”
(Mohamed Ihsan, 2006)

Is your password hack-able?

Yeah, once again I managed to crack another password. Now, it's a password belongs to one of the Technical Assistant (TA) in my college. I able to crack it not because I'm smart or whatever but it's due to the TA's weak password.

Therefore, this posting focuses on how to have a strong password.

The following are the characteristics of a strong password that will take years to crack unless the cracker use a supercomputer to crack it. Your password:

• Has to be more than eight charcters
• Shall not be a word
• Must be the combination of UpperCaSe, $ymbol$ and numb3r5.

The typical password cracking will be something like this:

• Searching the dictionary to get the same code that belongs to the password (Hash)
• Brute-force cracking: Running combinations with numbers.
• If the hacker still can't get it, the last choice will be using brute-force method with the character set including alphabets, numbers and symbols (The longer it is, the more time it takes, probably year(s) except using supercomputer.)

How ever social-engineering also is another manual method. Therefore, no matter what it is, NEVER accidentally give your password's charcteristics to anyone. E.g. the hacker might ask some questions to know more about your password.

Therefore, please follow the guidelines provided. You're identification is very valuable even if you are not in higher positions.

I'm not a hacker. Even a kid who knows how to use Google can be a hacker.

Lost & Found: Pen Drive

I say man..... Such a bad experience with a very happy ending. I was sitting in the Computer Lab 3 (Previously Lab1), my position was between Wen Tau (Right) and Wei Kit (Left). I wanted to go to the EPSON Lab. Accidentally, I couldn't find it, so I was searching for it from Epson Lab until Lab3. But failed to find it.

Then, I thought may be Wei Kit and Wen Tau took it for fun. But finally I found it under the chair. The lanyard stuck to the chair's wheels therefore I couldn't find it earlier.

However, I feel that there is a moral behind the story. The following are some of it:

• Big problems might have simple solutions
• Always backup your pendrive, if possible encrypt the data using with passwords to avoid data from being stolen.
• Never blame others, always blame yourself. We are humans, we do mistakes.
• Eventough we can never be perfect, we must try our best to be.

May be this posting sounds funny and dumb. But, just try to think in a different perpective. Things do happen....

IndiaMuslim.org

I have been thinking of developing a portal for the Malaysian Indian Muslim community for a long time. I got the idea when I was in form four.

Due to extenuating circumstance (normal la right?) such as lack of knowledge on PHP programming, no free time and bad internet connection, I failed to make that dream come true. :-(

However, I was quite happy when one of my relative, Azri from Penang told me about the existance of such a site: http://www.indiamuslim.org

Btw, when I joined the site as member, my first impression was very good. However, after some time, I notice that most of the topics are very boring because most of the members just copy and paste those junk e-mails that they receive in their inboxes.

Anyway, I can't comment too much about the site because the admin also have done a good job. The GUI of the site is quite nice with some prayer times, pictures, statistics and downloads.

Therefore, I would like to thank the admin and moderators for developing the portal and I hope that they will make it better and more interesting.

7th Malaysian Open Schools Karate Championship

Oooh man, after so long, once again the SJIKC team went for another competition. Since I wasn't prepared for it, I didn't want to join. However, I was choosen to be one of the Team manager for the participants from Honbu and St. John dojo.

I really gain lots of experience from this duty. First of all, I managed to improve my communication skills, I have to meet strangers and argue with them in order to make sure that my friends get the right resources such as the chance to be in the ring, lunch and some freebies like t-shirts.

Other than that, I also managed to improve my teamwork skills, for example, we have to delegate the work among our selves, therefore some of the people that I worked together were, Sensei Wan, Sensei Admond, Suharin and Inderan.

This was also another oppoturnity for me get closer with Puchong students such as Inderan and his juniors.

However, I made some mistakes in carrying out my duty and I hope that I can improve further.

Thanks for Shihan George, Sensei Wan, Sensei Admond and my fellow friends for helping me to carry out my duty.