Noel's Muses

Updated Feb 28, 2014

For complete run down, please visit The Guardians NSA Files

The Prism program allows the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the world's largest surveillance organisation, to obtain targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without having to obtain individual court orders.

With this program, the NSA (a military defined organisation) is able to reach directly into the servers of the participating companies and obtain both stored communications as well as perform real-time collection on users.

We have recently been hearing reports from American politicians, Embassy staff (Yes, looking at you Jeff Bleich), and U.S. cloud service providers, and security experts all claiming the worlds fear of U.S. Laws, like the Patriot Act when it comes to hosting data in the U.S., is just FUD, even as recent as two days ago I read a report from a U.S. cloud expert in Europe trying to show the world it is safe to host data in the U.S., claiming there is oversight, court orders are in fact needed (something that we have known for along time is utter rubbish - google FISA warrant), and this expose about PRISM proves it.

Prominent world renowned media organisation, The Guardian, has blown the lid after obtaining highly classified documents

The United States National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants (like Microsoft), according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says Continue reading "PRISM - The US Govt Caught Out, Yet Again"

Here we are in the year 2013, and Microsoft's incompetence (or is it arrogance?) still continues to astound me. We are now (and have been for nearly twelve months) at a stage where the normal age-old Internet Address ranges are depleted, yes, they have now pretty much run out of IP addresses all around the world, most regions will no longer issue any more IPv4 addresses to existing organisations, and new organisations are severely restricted in how many they can obtain - because there are little to none to give out. The problem of IPv4 address depletion has been solved for some time by the new IP address scheme, called IPv6, however, at present less than 1% of the world is using IPv6, many service providers, businesses and governments are moving that way, albeit very slowly, and there is going to be serious problems in the near future.

I'm not going to go off on a tangent like many of the IPv6 fanboi's do, and lets face it, they have been crying wolf since late nineties about running out of addresses within two years, when that was never the case and time has proved that, so they have no-one else to blame but themselves for the slow take-up of IPv6 today but now it is essential that all service providers, businesses, and governments stop delaying, and start configuring their entire networks for IPv6 - especially the service providers with end users, where here in Australia,
Continue reading "Why Windows XP users need to dump Internet Explorer - NOW!"

In a few short weeks, from December 3 to 14, the ITU will meet to decide the Internet's as we know it today, future. They want to take over full control, deciding on regulating it, what we can see or can't see, how companies must stop supplying access in some cases (PIPA, SOPA etc anyone?) and more importantly, introducing government access fees for carriers, which will drive up the cost of Internet access for everyone, those are just some of the ideas, with censorship being the huge one of course, and dictated by communist countries, so how do people in say for example Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany like being told the type of content they can or can not access by the likes of Iran and China... The words I have for that are legally unprintable!

ITU participants (representatives of each of our own countries governments) need to hear from as many Internet users as possible to voice their opinion in stopping more madness Internet control madness.

Sign the petition here

You can watch this short video to understand more about why this is a bad thing...

Continue reading "Open Letter to the Governments of the world and the ITU"

ICANN are considering the introduction of Dotless Domains, basically, this means, instead of, for example entering in http://blog.ausics.net, I could buy ausics and you only enter in http://blog.ausics or http://ausics

Now, some of you might think that's a cool idea, but NO, it's not! What about host names on LAN, I have a box called fox (no pun intended, well, ok, maybe ) so, if I http://fox, I want my local fox, not someones domain, http://fox the use of hostname in local lookups (search lists) in place of FQDN, has been used for near eternity on PC's.

It could not be one of the more crazy and stupidest moves by the hierarchy yet, for reasons I explained in my submission (below)

I really recommend those in a system or network administrative position to have a read of ICANNS RFC, and submit their opinion on it, one of the more vocal voices against this, is more or less Mr DNS himself, Paul Vixie who wrote about it last year.

Regrettably, you have only a couple of days, submissions close Sept 24 2012....

Continue reading "Have ICANN Lost The Plot"

The well publicised GoDaddy outage on Sept 11 this year should be a huge wakeup for everyone to find out, just how good their network is designed.

So, you have multiple data links to multiple carriers, redundancy, failover, the works, even a wireless/microwave link in case someone digs up the entire block including your fibre. You've also got dual power supplies in your routers, switches, and servers, even redundant routers and switches, they are all protected by dual channel mains supplies, each with their own dedicated UPS and battery bank, both connecting into the grid by two separate diverse paths, backed up by two generators.

You can go to bed tonight and sleep easy can't you... Or can you?

Continue reading "How redundant is your network, really?"

What is contained within, may in part, in Australia, be illegal - No, I'm not talking about bomb making, I'm talking about... home ethernet data cable work, be it patch leads, or running between sockets in different rooms....

So, you're wondering, WTF? Well, yes, if you do data cabling work, even in your own, owner-occupied home, you must not only be a an open registered cabler, but you must also have structured cabling endorsements.

Where I disagree with this however is it being illegal for you to cable up a couple of rooms in your own owner-occupied home for data to access the Internet, but our nanny government has decided that's tough luck, the previous Digital Data Exemption that allowed this is completely gone with a rewrite of The Rules so you can't!

That aside, if your cabling a network that doesn't, and can not have access to the telecommunications network in any way shape or form (incl wireless, 3/4G, Cable, etc), in other words is a 100% intranet, then the law does not apply, because it is not regarded as "customer cabling", and you can do what you want, and we will assume that's the case here.

Continue reading "Ethernet Cabling - It's Easy"