Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
WHAT’S THE STORY?
1. OH yeah, there’s an election (or three) on today. Voters can give their preferences to elect both councillors and MEPs for Ireland today. (Those is Longford-Westmeath and Dublin West are also voting for a new TD each.) We’ll be with you round the clock here with results this weekend – in the meantime, see what these canny children we met have to say about politics:
2. THE tunnel to house the controversial onshore section of the Corrib gas pipeline has been completed. Shell Ireland is happy; Shell to Sea, not so much.
3. THE UK Independence Party (UKIP), despite several recent controversies, has surged ahead in local council elections there. “The UKIP fox is in the Westminster hen house,” said UKIP leader Nigel Farage today.
4. THERE are serious concerns about Stewarts Care, a facility in Dublin for people with intellectual disabilities, where inspections have discovered children housed in adult accommodation and mixed gender dormitories, lack of suitable locks on toilet doors and other worrying elements.
5. REALLY? Apparently, Irish people believe that now is a good time to buy a house (according to an Ipsos MRBI survey). Meanwhile, seven people are becoming homeless every day in Dublin, a group which works with homeless people says; just this week they came across a young woman who is three weeks from giving birth, sleeping rough on the streets.
It’s possibly someone showing off their capability before putting it up for auction. Like the Christmas Sony hack a couple of years ago
Here’s why this wasn’t a nation state actor. Let’s take a look at an excerpt from the log of the Firewall on my Home Router: (IP’s truncated)
Oct 22 16:26:30: [Minor] Port Scan is detected (186.244.206.xx:15314->109.255.xx.yy:23 TCP) from module Firewall
Oct 22 16:28:07: [Minor] Port Scan is detected (83.21.5.xx:63112->109.255.xx.yy:9999 TCP) from module Firewall
Oct 22 16:28:04: [Minor] Port Scan is detected (93.171.199.xx:11943->109.255.xx.yy:23 TCP) from module Firewall
My router (and yours) is scanned thousands of times a day, looking for open ports through which they can connect to webcams, home alarm systems etc etc. Not that they want to spy on you, or steal your stuff. That’s actually quite rare. Instead they will simply turn your devices into internet weapons that will send crafted queries designed to spam other machines, anywhere else on the Net.
It’s not the Russians doing this. It’s gangs of basement dwellers and malcontents. Much ado about nothing in terms of world politics. Be more worried about your shiny new Thermostat.
State sponsored hackers are “sitting in the basement” type hackers who are just employed, plus there’s a lot more of them, what are they on about? They’re really pushing this Russia thing! There’s a few videos of Putin talking to international journalists asking them to actually do their job and report on what’s happening because the U.S. Media are out of control. It’s a sad state of affairs when you get to this stage.
@Linda: Well yes Linda, but with the additional training, education and skill-set that comes with that. They don’t spend their lives scanning Virgin media IP blocks trying to hack home devices. They don’t care about DYN (the company hit yesterday) or their customers, by and large, or perform low grade nuisance attacks in general.
Instead they are busy doing the same thing to IP blocks belonging to infrastructure and governments.
Which is why I think we agree that this was unlikely to be nation state and even if it was Russia are no more likely to be guilty than China, Iran or North Korea if it was.
We agree. I think it’s least likely to be Russia anyway, if they really thought it was them they wouldn’t say it. I mean why this story and not the one where Putin is saying he doesn’t want to get into a war with the U.S but they have to stop moving their nuclear stuff over toward him? If there’s even a chance that the U.S. is trying to start a war, shouldn’t we know this before we worry about who fiddled with Twitter? They’ve done it before and they’re at it again.
This has F-Society written all over it…
I found the discrimination against me as a kid was very prominent, as one of the few vegetarian in school, I really understood how it felt to be frowned upon for being different. Other students would shout ‘winner winner, chicken dinner’ at me when they quite clearly knew I did not eat the low grade chicken there degenerate mum’s would make them scoff on a daily basis.
@Jaque H Doyle, winner winner, chicken dinner. How do you like your steak cooked ?
Someone putin on a show of power in support of his business friend, Trump?
So the US are saying that, at the moment, the Russians are the evil superior cyber power? It could be anyone really. Their tech companies have been farming out manufacturing, data handling and coding etc to the Far East and third world for years chasing the bottom line, so it shouldn’t surprise them if they’re open to both fair and unfair competition, underground practices and even attacks from anywhere in the world. Silicon Valley has the startup and investment gig but the technology is inherently wide open to bad intentioned talent everywhere.
Jasus I hope they don’t DOS attack Eircode… Pizza consumption would grind to a halt!!!
TBH these people bore me. If this is what makes you happy in life you really need to get a life it’s so much more fun!
Us testing the internet kill switch , before martial law is declared all communications will be severed !
Can’t be Anonymous, most of their hacker’s are actually in prison or simply not good enough, so that leaves the Chinese or the Russian’s? My money’s on the commies…
Eh they’re both commies…
have your say