Two days ago, the Democratic Action Party (DAP) lodge a report to the MCMC on an ‘internet blockade’ targeting DAP related political websites that was allegedly being carried out by Telekom Malaysia (TM). As you may know TM is the largest ISP in Malaysia, and if TM suddenly blocks a website–a large chunk of the Malaysian public are automatically denied access to it.

The DAP IT manager (didn’t know the DAP had an IT team now did ya?), in his press statement said that :

In investigating the DPI filtering equipment location, I have found 1032 suspicious network equipment using same IP address family as the the Arbor Network Peakflow SP with TM branding. Since the login page of this network equipment bears TM logo, undoubtedly MCMC should haul up TM and conduct IT forensic investigation on all 1032 equipments without delay. I am fully prepared to assist MCMC in its investigations.

In light of this new evidence, MCMC must re-examine its 2nd May statement. MCMC should be politically impartial and hold the standard of government regulatory body that it should be. It must put the interest of all Malaysians first.

Now this isn’t really news, to be fair the Arbor Network Peakflow SP solution is meant primarily as a DDoS protection security suite with a slight tinge of DPI functionality added on the side. TM in their defence haven’t really denied they own the Arbor Network solution–there’s even a joint press release from 2004 to announce their purchase of it.

Unless TM operates like the government, in which they announce the purchase of something in 2004, but only start to using it in 2013–I’m guessing they were using Arbor for other purposes before they decided to unleash its DPI functionality.

But there could be a twist.

Bluecoat Packetshaper in Malaysia

We all know the Labour Day report from Citizenlabs suggesting that government agents were intentionally spying on Malaysian Citizens using Finspy (or at least we ‘should’ all know about that report). There is however, a lesser known report, that was released early this year that detailed Bluecoat Packetshaper servers in Malaysia. Unlike Arbor, which promotes itself as a DDoS protection solution, Bluecoat Packetshaper openly advertises itself as a censorship tool, an excerpt from their website says:

The method for detecting those sneaky little eavesdroppers was pretty ingenious though. The researchers sent two urls in their skype messages to each other. The urls pointed to servers that the researchers owned. For all practical reasons these urls were made specifically for the purpose of the test and should not be receiving any traffic from anywhere–unless of course Microsoft was listening.

Then they sat at wait at their servers to see if they received any traffic, and lo’ and behold barely a few hours later they received some rather funky traffic from an IP address registered to Microsoft in Redmond. *busted!*

The urls didn’t just end with the .com, but had sensitive material appended to it (or at least that’s what the researchers made it look like), and Microsoft used the url which meant they had to be eavesdropping on Skype messages and conversations. More importantly these urls were made to look like they held sensitive material, such as bank logins..etc etc, but Microsoft still used it, and worse even visited the sites to see what was on it.

Even more shocking is that Microsoft isn’t even denying the charge–yet, but they point out that they do scan urls once in a while to flag spam, but H-online isn’t buying it.

For more info, check out this brilliant post from them here.

Don’t be surprised folks, if you can’t even trust Jay Leno these days, what makes you think you can trust Microsoft. Reminds me of the time Nokia thought it was a good idea to look at the detailed web browsing habits of their customers–guess what happened then. I’ll give you a hint–the customers weren’t too happy.

Now–here’s a thought. How many foreign leaders do you think use Skype to phone home when their abroad?

Meet your new Deputy Minister of the Communication and Multimedia ministry–Dato’ Jailani Johari!!!

Apart from having a whooping 71 followers on twitter, and a mind-blowing 5 (yes that’s a single digit) connections on LinkedIn. Although,  he does have more than 2,000 likes on his Facebook page–which he started on April 15th 2013. Coming back to twitter though, did you know he follows a spine-chilling 12 accounts–must be some pretty heavy Communicating going on in the Ministry eh!

Yet, somehow, we think he’s a great guy for the job. The biggest problem I have though is that Dato’ Jailani comes from the SKMM, and I’m just uncomfortable with that fact. Sort of like having someone from Goldman Sachs sit as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He comes from the system!!

However, that’s slightly better than his Boss though, Dato’ Sri Ahmad Shabery Cheek, whose blog is hosted on blogspot and was last updated August 2009. (2009 !!) Our new Minister of Communication and Multimedia also has no facebook presence of twitter account to speak off.

The one bright spark though, is that you might remember Dato’ Sri Shabery Cheek as the guy who debated Anwar on the rising oil prices–whatever you think of him, at least he was willing to do something almost no one in his party had the guts to do at the time. Also his Bahasa Wikipedia entry states:

Setelah menjadi Menteri Penerangan pada 2008, beliau memberitahu kepada semua blogger supaya dapat diadakan perjumpaan dengannya. Beliau juga memulakan program “Blog” di RTM yang memanggil bloggers-bloggers untuk di wawancara. Antara bloggers yang pernah dipanggil termasuklah bloggers Raja Petra dan juga kuda kepang. Program Blog ini telah membuka peluang kepada bloggers untuk keluar dan memberikan pandangan mereka di televisyen milik kerajaan, sesuatu yang tidak pernah berlaku sebelum ini.

So at least he has some items on his resume that are positive. Though, I’d begin by updating my blog and starting a twitter account.

So here’s wishing the two ministers all the best in their coming term. Don’t get me started though, about how we re-appointed the Education Minister who oversaw our biggest drop in academic performance ever. That’s something I can get off my chest another day.

The encryption key that is responsible for keeping your sensitive bank details secret, is nothing more than a very very long number, and that number protects your money more than any steel door or armed guard ever could.

But it’s still a number.

Similarly the encryption that protects the entire movie industry by making it hard to rip DVDs, or the encryption that makes it impossible for people to produce Sony Playstation games is the just a number.

So what happens when people try to protect these number by making it a secret–someone finds out, and usually that someone wants to tell the world by posting it on forums or websites, the problem is that unlike any other trade protection mechanism like a patented or copyrighted material–an encryption key is a number, and surely no one can claim ownership of a number to the extent of making it’s publication illegal?

Well at least we know someone did try to copyright the number PI–and fortunately, the courts rejected that claim...on Pi Day.

*Btw, Pi day is the 14 of March in the US, since it’s denoted as 3/14 which is the first 3-digits of Pi. In Malaysia, I propose we celebrate Pi day on the 31st of April–unfortunately April only has 30 days. dang!! 

A way to think about this, is the amount of Gated and Guarded communities we have sprawling through the Klang Valley (and even beyond). People are willing to sacrifice the extra money and give up some freedoms to live in a Gated and Guarded area, in some cases the premiums reach 100% just to live in a area that is guarded. Residents of these communities also experience the hassle of having to ‘tap-in’ and ‘tap-out’ of their areas in addition to the tremendous difficulty hosting visitors in these neighbourhoods.

Yet, people still live in them.

WHY?

The answer is simple–security. People perceive a high rate of crime and are therefore willing to give up some personal freedoms to live in a secure neighbourhood.

Notice it isn’t the actual rate of crime that drives these behaviours, it’s the perceived rate of crime that causes people to give up their freedoms (and a whole load of cash) in order to live in them.

We see this in technology as well. The internet was meant to be free, a place for the free flow of ideas and thoughts–but this scares people, particularly governments who want to remain in power. So the Government tries to control it, but has to contend with citizens that want their freedom online.

From the governments perspectives it’s really easy problem to solve. As long as people perceive there is a ‘danger’, they’d be willing to give up freedoms to achieve security.

So the government begins campaigns like arresting bloggers, and blocking sites–all in the name of security. However, are we going to idly stand by and allow the government to censor the internet–even when it’s censoring hate speech?

Yes, I’m talking about Papagomo, who was accused of posting that the “Chinese in DAP ‘wajib ditendang’ even though if it means bloodshed”.  I won’t comment on what was said here, but the fact remains we don’t (or rather shouldn’t) censor the internet.

Papagomo’s site has been pretty hard to access these past few days, now we could say it may be the extra traffic the site is getting, but Papagomo host his site on Blogspot, which means he runs on Google Servers, and those servers don’t break a sweat even under the harshest of traffic conditions. So what’s the deal here? Is Malaysia censoring the internet?

If you put yourself in the Malaysians Government shoes, your way to get people to give up their freedom is to allow them to perceive the threat of racial violence, and then bank on the predictability of human nature–that eventually people will allow the government to censor the internet in the name of security. Once again, this isn’t about the real danger of racial violence, merely the perception of it.

While I wasn’t around in 1969–I think there’s enough evidence to suggest that the probability of racial riots in Malaysia is infinitesimally small–yet as long as the perception of it is high, the government can always bank on people supporting a movement to censor it–all in the name of security. Just like those gated and guarded communities.

So in my mind, we should never censor the internet. We should make rational decisions based on the information we have, and all the information suggest that we should not give up our freedom to information just because some guy named Papagomo wants to post up some racially offensive postings. To me, that means nothing, the fact that he said it and nothing happened is proof enough we have nothing to worry about.

Well maybe not true, I am worried about the government censoring my internet, and the massive harm it can bring.

However, I’m keeping myself abreast with all the hate going around, including the latest ‘Buy Chinese Last Movement’ or BCLM. If you don’t know what it is, just Google it and you’ll find out, it’s the latest in a string of racist movements that have spawned since Pru-13, and it probably won’t be the last.

There’s a lot I want to get off my mind, but this so called ‘boycott’ of Chinese products seems to make little sense. It reminds me of the time when Malaysians were encouraged to boycott Israeli goods and services–a lot of good that did us. In fact, I feel that it’s impossible to boycott someone who has better tech than you–because when you boycott a country with better technology than you, that’s not a boycott–it’s a self-imposed embargo.

Think about it, the Arab League has been boycotting Israel since 1948, that’s more than 50 years ago. What impact did the boycott have on Israel? Well take a look for yourself:

The Israeli economy makes the Malaysian ‘Tiger’ economy look like slow poke Rodriguez. Their GDP per capita has increased at a constantly higher rate than Malaysia, I’m not comparing Israel to Malaysia, I’m just putting their economy into context–and remember folks the entire Arab League boycotted Israel since it’s inception.

The Israelis have gone their merry way, becoming a core country for companies like Microsoft, Google and even Intel. There’s basically not a single shred of technology that you can buy today that in some way did not come from somewhere in Israel. My favorite traffic avoiding App, Waze–is an Israeli invention, the technology in the kinect is from Israel and there’s a whole bunch more. So don’t tell me we’re boycotting Israel, the boycott only has political consequences, no economic ones…not for Israel at least.

So we’re back at square one again, a bunch of racist bigots thinking that by somehow not buying specific brands or frequenting certain businesses the Chinese in the country will ‘learn’–not only is this such a childish idea akin to my niece saying ‘let’s not friend them anymore’ the very fact that ALL the data suggest that it wasn’t a Chinese Tsunami, but rather an Urban one makes my blood boil that such people are so ignorant of the evidence. Not just ignorant, but arrogantly ignorant.

Boycotts don’t work–they just send a political message, but almost never achieve their desired economical objective. Add this to the fact, that the country with the most technology wins–and you’ll realize that Malaysia is in no position to boycott anything. We sent a man to space, built the worlds tallest building and even the 4th longest bridge in South East Asia–but we did it all with someone elses technology, whether it was the Russians, Japanese or Koreans. So until we start to develop our own technology–our boycotts will be nothing more than self-imposed embargoes. So the next time you switch on Waze, play with your XBox, or even use any PC with an Intel Inside Chip, just remember how our good (and technologically) superior friends in Israel help make it possible.

Here’s some quick tips on how to access blocked sites in Malaysia that is blocked by the ISP (Telekom, Maxis, Time..etc etc). Currently the ISPs in Malaysia are throttling and filtering specific traffic to websites like Malaysiakini, Facebook and even Youtube. Just in case, things get nasty post-election day, I thought I’d quickly put together a couple of ways you can access Malaysiakini and other online portals despite a Unifi censor.

Tip 1: Use a proxy server

The quickest and easiest way to access a blocked website is to use a proxy. A proxy is a website located somewhere else in the world, that acts as a ‘proxy’ for you to access. So while the ISP may block direct access from your PC to Malaysiakini–it can’t block access from your PC to the proxy and the proxy to Malaysiakini.

Click here for a list of 90 proxy servers, compiled throughout the world. My favorites are:

http://www.hidemyass.com & http://texasproxy.org/

Tip 2: Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)

In a VPN setup, what actually happens is that you setup a connection to a private server and then use that server as a proxy for all your connections. This means that as long as your Internet Service Provider doesn’t block the IP address of your VPN you can basically roam free. Another good reason to have a VPN is that they’re usually encrypted, so that your ISP can’t look at what you’re looking at, some VPN providers provide 2048 bit encryption, which would take a super computer millions of years to crack.

So how do you setup a VPN. Well thankfully there’s a free version you can try, and it’s called proXPN. proXPN is a fantastic free VPN service that uses end-2-end encryption to keep the baddies and your local ISP out of your business, it utilizes a 2048 bit encryption. On the website, the company claims that:

With proXPN nobody* can…

There’s a downside however, the free version is throttled to just 100kbps, and you need to use a specific application to access the service. That being said the paid version doesn’t have throttled speed and cost just over USD9/month. I think that’s a pretty sweet deal. However, for paid versions you can try BolehVPN.

Tip 3: Use BolehVPN

If you’re looking to support  a local organization, the guys over at bolehvpn are doing a pretty good job as well. While they don’t have a free version to offer, they do have a RM5 offering that last 2 days, and depending on your needs that could be good enough. I’ve used bolehvpn and can vouch for it’s quality and service.

BolehVPN is marketed mostly as a VPN for you to bit-torrent on. Since streamyx blocks/throttles torrent traffic, a VPN is just one of the ways to work around that. BolehVPNs offerings start at Rm5 for 2 days, to as low as RM230 for a whole year, which works out to less than Rm20/month. Given that it gives you the ability to bypass nearly every filter an ISP can throw at you and encrypt your data from pesky eyes, I think that’s the best deal in town!!

At this point, I can’t stress enough, how much I think using BolehVPN throughout the election weekend for Rm5 could be the best bloody deal in town.

Tip 4: Use TOR

For you cheap-skates out there–there is a very good, very FREE alternative, that’s a bit slow–but not by much.

The Onion Routing (TOR) is a super anonymous, way to browse the internet. The concept is beyond the scope of this post, but its so good even criminals use it to evade law enforcement–successfully. TOR routes your traffic through at least 3 different servers, and your ISP won’t even know which sites you’re accessing, and the deep packet inspection that Telekom is currently performing won’t work on it.

Here’s a quick look at how to install TOR on your PC. It works, and it’s free…but please la–use BolehVPN.

Conclusion

I’ve intentionally left out ways that won’t bypass the current filtering that Telekom Malaysia is employing, so things like how to change your DNS server isn’t on this post, but you can find it from an older post of mine.

Hope that helps folks.

Malaysia has had only 1 party in power since it’s independence—that’s a long time to be in power, and for the first time since 1955 the ruling party in Malaysia is under threat, not just to lose it’s 2/3rd majority in Parliament, but the entire elections altogether, and with it control of the Federal Government.

Starting to Censor the Internet

Shortly after the previous general elections, the Government issued a directive to all local ISPs to block access to Malaysia Today, a pro-opposition political blog. This was the first of many instances of the Government censoring the internet, which violated not just common notions of justice and fairplay but also broke a promise the government made several years before.

While trying to court foreign investment by Tech companies, the Malaysian Government started the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) which was meant to be a technological hub that would attract those much needed Tech dollars. However, realizing that most investors, would be wary of investing in a country that so rigidly controlled its media, particularly if those investors were from the technology sector, the Government sought to assuage those fears by implementing the MSC Bill of Guarantees—which among other things promised that the government wouldn’t censor the internet.

That promise was broken.

Ramping up the Censorship game

In the wake of the 13^th General elections though, the ruling party has ramped up its game.

In March 2013, just 2 months before the 13th General elections, CitizenLabs reported that it had detected Finfisher servers on Malaysian IP addresses. FinFisher is marketed as a powerful tool for accessing the computers of suspected criminals and terrorists. Once it has infected a computer, FinFisher manages to elude anti-virus detection while performing task such as stealing password, hijacking e-mail accounts, wiretapping Skype calls, and even turning on your computer’s camera and microphone to record conversations.

Local media picked up the story and reported it as the “Malaysian Government was spying on its citizens”. I was quick to dismiss it as coincidence, as the presence of a Finfisher server in a country is hardly proof of such activities by the Government. The local regulators launched an immediate investigation–not into the Finfisher servers but on the local media that reported it–claiming the report was false.

Not your grandmothers DDOS attack

However, other stories begun to circulate, including reports from Malaysiakini, a popular online news portal, that its servers were sustaining massive DDOS attacks. On April 11th 3 Radio web-portals that openly criticize the government were also sustaining DDOS attacks, the scale of which reached 40 million hits an hour. In addition to the DDOS attacks, Radio Free Sarawak broadcasts over shortwave radio lost clear transmission after jamming with noise transmitted on the same shortwave frequency. All attacks were focused primarily on pro-opposition radio and web portals.

Regular DDOS attacks though, were just the beginning. With less than a week to the elections, a local internet forum soon posted details accusing Malaysia biggest ISP (Telekom Malaysia) of performing deep packet inspection (DPI) on internet traffic. Deep Packet inspection involves analysing internet traffic to determine not just the destination of the traffic (e.g. Facebook) but also the data sent to the destination, basically the ISP would be able to determine which particular page on Facebook you were visiting or which specific video you were watching on Youtube.

Popular videos on Malaysiakini were being blocked, particularly those implicating current Prime Minister Najib Razak to the death of a Mongolian women named Altantuya Shaariibuu. Facebook was working fine, but specific Facebook pages such as those of opposition political parties were ‘experiencing difficulties’, and Youtube experienced similar targeted blocks on political videos.

With elections just 5 days away though, my initially skepticism turned to Gospel-like belief. (Alleluia, I see the light kind of stuff)

Finfisher confirmed. Government spies among us

On the 1st of May 2013, Citizenlabs released a second report on Finfisher, not just highlighting the existence of Finfisher servers in Malaysia, but detailing a malicious document containing the spyware being spread via email to unsuspecting citizens. The document was written in Malay and titled“SENARAI CADANGAN CALON PRU KE-13 MENGIKUT NEGERI.” , which loosely translates to the “LIST OF CANDIDATES FOR THE 13th GENERAL ELECTION BY STATE”.

The title of the document clearly exposes the target demographic for infection—the average Malaysian Citizen!! Anyone claiming to be using Finfisher to target criminals or terrorist wouldn’t use such a generically titled document.

While none of this proved that Malaysian Government is involved, CitizenLabs states that “FinFisher is explicitly only sold to governments we think that it is reasonable to assume that some government actor is responsible”

The deep packet inspection of internet traffic, coupled with the spying of private citizens begs the question—what does the Government know? If the Government is able to determine what kind of pages you’re visiting on Facebook and what videos you’re watching on Youtube—let alone turn on your webcam to take a look at your face—couldn’t it quickly guess (quite accurately) who you’d be voting for? Doesn’t the thought a government knowing who you’ll be voting for even before you vote scare you?

The Government is too powerful

Anonymity is the cornerstone of any democratic election process–and  anonymity doesn’t exist in countries where the government is performing Deep Packet Inspection and running Spyware. Without anonymity a free and fair election is a wild dream, and without fair elections–what kind of democracy can possibly spring forth?

Companies that market Finfisher-like software claim its for the ‘good guys’ to catch the ‘bad guys’. Which is why it’s only sold exclusively to governments.

What happens though—when the Government IS the bad guy?

Well that allegation is true–to me at least, and here’s a taste of what Finfisher can do in the hands of the government.

Beberapa minggu lalu, saya telah menulis tentang sekeping artikel yang ‘tidak bertanggungjawab’ oleh Malaysian Insider apabila ‘mendakwa’ kerajaan Malaysia mengintip rakyat Malaysia – tanpa sebarang bukti. Saya amat kecewa bahawa wartawan tersebut membuat kenyataan tersebut tanpa apa-apa bukti–apabila menulis blog tersebut saya kecewa dan saya marah!

Tetapi yang lebih penting–saya silap!

Mengikut laporan dari Citizenlab semalam–sekarang timbulnya bukti bahawa kerajaan Malaysia MEMANG mengitip rakyat–terutama sekali Rakyat Malaysia yang mengunakan Bahasa Melayu.

Mengikut Laporan Citizenlab:

Laporan yang lebih terperinci mendedahkan bahawa program Finspy digunakan untuk mengintip rakyat telah merebak melalui satu dokumen bertajuk “SENARAI sandaran pengundi PRU KE-13 MENGIKUT NEGERI”.

Setelah pengguna klik pada dokumen tersebut, komputer mereka akan serta-merta dijangkiti FinSpy, yang lebih menakutkan bukan sekadar betapa senangnya untuk dijangkiti Finspy, malahan hanya 8 daripada 46 perisian Anti-Virus berjaya mengesan Finspy apatah lagi menangani jangkitan tersebut.

Apabila dijangkit – Finspy akan me-replikasi sendiri ke PC yang dijangkiti dan ‘berpura-pura’ untuk menjadi pelayar Mozilla Fierfoz. Jadi setiap kali komputer yang dijangkit itu mengunakan Firefox – maklumat dihantar semula ke pusat arahan, melaporkan setiap url, and lawatan oleh PC tersebut. Tidak boleh dikenalpasti tetapi beberapa password untuk servis popular seperti twitter dan skype juga akan dihantar balik the pusat arahan Finspy.

Jika diambil bersama-sama dengan laporan terbaru mengenai bagaimana Telekom Malaysia telah melakukan ‘Deep packet inspection’ di Facebook dan Youtube, ini merupakan satu trend yang sangat membimbangkan.

Dengan bukti ini, kita kini boleh agak mengatakan, bahawa kerajaan Malaysia MEMANG menapis internet, MEMANG menyekat laman web tertentu dan MEMANG juga mengintip Warganegara Malaysia – lebih khusus mensasarkan rakyat Malaysia yang berbahasa Melayu.

Minta maaf dari Tech Evagelist

Saya amat kesal selepas saya mendakwa bahawa Kerajaan Malaysia tidak mengintip rakyat itu – dan saya memang salah mengenai tahap ke mana kerajaan akan pergi untuk mengintip rakyat sendiri. Saya tidak boleh mula untuk menyuarakan perasaan saya dengan kerajaan saya sendiri.

Satu permohonan maaf peribadi kepada Boo Su-Lyn (wartawan yang membuat laporan yang awal di Malaysia Insider) adalah wajar juga.

Lebih penting lagi, memohon maaf kepada orang-orang yang menulis sebarang tweet pautan untuk jawatan asal, serta orang-orang yang berkongsi pada media sosial. Akhir sekali, saya minta maaf untuk Uncle Lim, yang juga memuatkan artikel di blog beliau.

Conclusion

Citizen lab mengakhiri laporan mereka secara berikut:

Maaf la brader!! Tetapi pegawai-pegawai pemantauan pilihan raya tidak melakukan apa-apa di atas jumlah besar sms SPAM  yang saya terima dari kerajaan Barisan Nasional, saya tidak mengharapkan mereka untuk berbuat apa-apa tentang perkara ini.

Ini adalah bukti bahawa Kerajaan Malaysia memang tidak menghormati hak peribadi rakyat Malaysia sendiri. Saya amat kecewa bahawa kerajaan saya sendiri – di negara saya sendiri melakukan perkara ini atas warganegara sendiri.

Walau bagaimanapun,  mujurlah pada 6 haribulan Mei–kita akan ubah Kerajaan.