Category Archives: Sri Lanka

#SMDayCMB The Hashtag That Made Me Lugh Hard.

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If you don’t know (like I didn’t know until 5 P.M yesterday, when a friend of mine asked me whether I was at the Mashable Social Media Day), there was something called Mashable Social Media Day at Excel World, Colombo. I don’t know what happened, whatever happened I guess it’s about social media.

And the hash tag for the event was #SMDayCMB, and when I logged into Twitter at 11 PM and checked some of the tweets, they were like this :

http://twitter.com/arvindjkv/status/219106547308036096

http://twitter.com/namila007/status/219103015066537984

And I was thinking this,

http://twitter.com/RukshanR/status/219121987862278144

http://twitter.com/ipv10/status/219123263199117313

If you don’t know Twitter started rolling a feature called Tailored Tweets, where trends are made according to your location, the websites you frequently visit and the tweets you make.

And it didn’t appear tonight, it was rolled 2 3 weeks back by Twitter.

There are no such thing as word wide trends, you can get the world-wide trends if you opt out from tailored trends.

I think the best thing for all the people to do is to know more about what’s happening in social media, rather than “troll” in for a social media day. Thanks for making us (me and @ivp10) laugh hard. I’m so rude.

PS : At least please read More Mashable, before going to their events.

http://twitter.com/RukshanR/status/219132370710827009

AnonymousLK, Case Closed?

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If you were reading the series of posts about AnonymousLK, we said that AnonymousLK is comprised of 4 hackers.

However we never posted any info about TX and Zer0 Thunder, therefore I think it’s good to add a short note about why we never posted information about these two.

After making the posts about HackerzMafia and ZonTa, @ipv10 went on to the IRC channel of AnonymousLK few weeks ago (irc.evilzone.org #srilankanz), where she talked with TX who once threatened us commenting on this blog.

By that time we’ve found almost all the information about TX and Zer0 Thunder and it was about whether we should post them or not. @ipv10 told TX what we’ve found about him and he admitted that it is him and he kindly asked not to post about him.

Because he was kind enough to admit his identity and told about his story and given us references to confirm his identity we decided not to post about him.

Same can be said about Zer0 Thunder, although he wasn’t ready to accept his identity. Finding Zer0 Thunder was the best part, it was hard to find loose ends. until we found out that we can get an email from hackimpact.com the website that Sameera (HackerzMafia) and Shalika (ZonTa) and Zer0 Thunder created, the email has the name of Zer0 Thunder in it.

Any one can get this email address by registering at hackimpact.com which is now hidden from the website and from Google by robot.txt.

UPDATE :

I just found this status from AnonymousLK today. The image shows them say that they have set up their IRC channel at irc.evilzone.org at #srilankanz.

If you look at the date you can see that the Tweet was made in August 22, 2011. And if you look at the date that AnonymousLK joined Twitter it’s August 19, 2011. So this further proves us right that the IRC channel was indeed used by AnonymousLK from the beginning.

We expected you, nothing happened.

The End?

Staying Frosty On Facebook.

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We say we’re living in a digital world and how people are connected through the internet more than ever. However, when it comes to using social networking most people are still very primitive. The latest addition to this came yesterday when a teacher was blackmailed on Facebook into sex by the suspect who befriended her on Facebook (News Here).

I think the reason for people to act differently online than in real life is a very complex one, social networking has only been here for like 10 years and most people on Facebook have been there since 2008 or later so most probably they’ve been social networking for only 4 years or less. It’s a new thing for all human beings and people have failed to understand the differences and similarities in real life and life online.

  • What makes people not to share their photos with everyone in real life while sharing them with everyone in the world on Facebook?
  • What makes people not be friendly and talk with strangers in real life while people accept every friend request on Facebook without even knowing that person exist in real life?and believe what they say.
  • What makes people not to share their private information in real life while they share everything what comes to their mind on Twitter?
Some good comments on the article “Teacher blackmailed into sex on Facebook” : 

I think people, specially children needed to be taught how to be safe on social networking and internet safety practices before they starting to use internet as we do with other things in real life. However, the fascinating thing is because internet and social networking has been there for a very short time it’s a new thing even for parents, and parents themselves don’t know how to be safe when it comes to being online.

I think I was lucky in that way because I started learning about computers and internet when I was 10 (I didn’t have my own computer, I got my first when I was 12) and I read the news and stories about how people got into trouble thanks to the internet. And when I got my own internet connection in 2010 when I was 20, I know how to protect myself on the internet and for me so far so good.

Being blackmailed into sex on Facebook is not the only thing that can happen to a person, there is an increasing trend where beautiful photos of girls are being posted on popular forums and sometimes even on porn forums, which can affect you for the rest of your life. These photos are then being used by other people in making fake profiles under fake names.

It’s amazingly simple for a fake profile on Facebook to get information from someone that they normally don’t share in real life, from mobile numbers to personal stories. Specially if you use a female profile it’s really easy to get information from both males and females alike.

This video on from Tom Ryan shows how easily how got access to military classifid information by using a fake profile called Robin Sage  : Tom Ryan | Palantir Technologies

There is another danger that you don’t understand in adding unknown people on Facebook. You can hack ANY, YES ANY Facebook account, if you can add 3 profiles in to your target profile. I won’t going to reveal the process, but trust me it’s very simple to hack any Facebook profile if you can slip 3 friends.

How to stay safe : 

  • Try to stay anonymous as possible, don’t even give your real date of birth to Facebook, Facebook only need it to confirm you are above the age to have a Facebook account.
  • Don’t add unknown people on Facebook, if you do make sure they don’t see personal stuff you post on Facebook.
  • Always use two factor authentication, so it’ll make your Facebook account almost always bullet proof. You can activate two factor authentication from the security settings on Facebook.
  • Don’t post any photos of you on Facebook, and it’s better to not to let others take photos of you if they are going to post them on Facebook.
  • And importantly learn how to be safe online before you jump into it.

Sri Lankan ISPs Block Access To Piratebay and Pastebin.

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Looks like Sri Lankan Internet Service Providers are blocking access to popular torrent tacking website The Pirate Bay (thepiratebay) and popular code sharing website pastebin.com.

The Sri Lanka Telecon has blocked access to Pastebin and The Pirate Bay for two days/ The Indian ISP AirTel has blocked access to torrent websites like The Pirate Bay and Torrents.eu for few weeks now.

It’s not sure why Sri Lanka Telecom is blocking access to patebin, however looks like not all Sri Lanka Telecom subscribers are affected, according to some pastbin is still accessible and takes a very long time for the page to come up. Pastebin is a website designed for code sharing, however now it’s widely being used by the Anonymous hackers  as a place to post their hacked data. So is Sri Lanka Telecom blocking access to pastebin because Anonymous hackers posting hacked information? There is no any other reason than that to block pastebin.

Looks like The Pirate Bay is also being blocked by Sri Lanka Telecom, the real reason for this is still unknown, there has been no press release or anything like that. Sri Lankan Telecom might be blocking Piratebay because of piracy issues, and people must not forget that Piratebay is also a place where Anonymous hackers release their hacked information.

@CrazyNalin @RukshanR @tpb TPB is banned from Airtel too. torrents . eu and some more too. Many people are having difficulties in accessing
— Madhu (@ipv10) May 20, 2012

However for non Sri Lankan Telecom subscribers pastebin and The Pirate Bay (for non AriTel subscribers) is still freely accessible.

Did Sri Lankan Telecom block patebin because of Anonymous hackers? I’ll update this post as I find more information.

However, if you know the ways it’s pretty much easy to bypass these blocks by using proxies, VPN, or my favorite TOR. Meanwhile in Pakistan Twitter has been blocked by the Pakistani Telecommunication Authority, looks like today is a sad day for freedom on the internet.