The (not particularly) dark secret of phone hacking

Between the News of the World's rather shady dealings with voice mail hacking and the amorphous web vigilante Anonymous leaping to the defence of Wikileaks there has been an enormous amount of talk of hacking in the press. From the tone of the press you would imagine these acts are being performed by a cabal of amoral genius hackers (If you were feeling saucy you might imagine them as Lisbeth Salander, but I've chosen the rather more wholesome Matthew Broderick) . After all much of the case has centred around Glenn Mulcaire a private detective hired for the task surely he must be some kind of master of these dark arts. 

Unfortunately the truth of the matter is really quite mundane. Most mobile networks allow you to access your voicemails from  numbers other than your own phone provided you have a PIN. The mobile phone networks in their wisdom enable this feature automatically even though most people don't use it, or even know it exists. Not only that, but unless you have explicitly changed it to something more secure it will be set to a default.  (If you are on Orange it's 1111, for O2 it's 8705, etc). If this has come as news to you then it's highly likely that anyone who knows your mobile phone number and can be bothered to Google the default PIN for your network could listen to your messages right now. 

It's so laughably simple to do that it astounds me that Clive Goodman needed to employ a PI to do it for him creating a paper trail that put him in jail. The real scandal is that no one in the media seems to be criticising the phone networks for giving everyone the same default password, or the government for failing to advise MPs on basic telephone security. 

So we've established that cell phone hacking is pretty simple, but bringing down Pay Pal that must take some kind of \Matrix style genius right?

Not so much. The attacks on companies refusing to deal with Wikileaks was a type of attack known as a Distributed Denial of Service attack or DDoS for short. The name sounds awfully complicated, but it's actually a basic as you can get and isn't really hacking at all. 

You might remember a little while back some hippy types got rather annoyed with Top Shop engaging in alleged tax avoidance and so decided to go and stand outside and cause a nuisance. 

A DDoS attack is simply the electronic equivalent. 

Lots of angry people connect to the Paypal site at the same moment until the servers that power the site are overwhelmed and can no longer do their job. Nothing is hacked and nothing is broken, but rather like Top Shop during the protest so many grumpy people are standing in the way that regular punters get turned away. You may have heard talk of sophisticated software called things like "Ion Cannon", but in reality a drinking bird pressing the refresh button on your web browser would have the same effect. It's no different to when you hear that a ticket website has crashed as a result of demand for the new Take That tour.

DDoS attacks are sometime carried out using hacked PCs by organised crime to do nefarious things like blackmail online casinos, but in this case it was simply a group of like minded individuals expressing their frustration with the online equivalent of a peaceful protest. 

The fear of the new means the Top Shop story gets reported as people expressing their democratic right to protest while the tone of the Wikileaks story ends up as evil hackers trying to bring about the end of society.

Kindle - First Impressions

You may have seen my previous post on my compulsion to buy a Kindle. Well quelle surprise I caved after getting to have a play with a family members Kindle over the holidays.

It arrived today and so I thought I would quickly post some first impressions before writing a full review when I've spent more time with it

Q: Are you ready for some unboxing porn?

A: Of course you are!

Apologies for the rubbish picture quality, but unfortunately though the Galaxy S is a great phone it has a rubbish camera (more of that in another post) 

It's brilliant that companies are focussing on creating a positive experience when you first come in to contact with a new shiny thing and I was really impressed with the excellent packaging. Minimal and understated, but really classy and well made at the same time. 

I was also impressed that the charger is a really nice looking unit and that power and data is supplied by a single Micro USB (Devices without standard connectors are my biggest gadget pet hate)

I can see why people have tried to rip the screen off believing it to be a dust cover because it looks so much like matt plastic. It took me a moment to realise that it was displaying a welcome message.

The Kindle feels light and easy to manage. I can imagine happily reading with it for hours (And after writing this I intend to). The screen is fantastic I haven't stopped being impressed with the magic effect of seemingly printed words changing before my eyes. It definitely fulfils Arthur C Clarke's third rule:  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The fact that when you buy a Kindle it comes pre-linked to your Amazon account is also brilliant because it allows you to dive straight in with nothing to get in your way. 

The overriding impression that you get when holding the Kindle is that it feels special in the way that Apple has been able to nail with it's recent products and the Galaxy Tab I was playing with earlier today really didn't.

My Kindle's first big outing is going to be on my four day business trip to Milan next week so I'll write up my experiences when I get back.

Ciao for now.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

BBC Sound of 2011 Long List

The BBC have just published their sound of 2011 long list some thoughts as I listen.

I'm impressed by Esben and the Witch as their name implies they sound like a dark fairytale. If their album keeps up this level of quality I can see it being on heavy rotation.

I'm a sucker for anything with a Dub Step flavour so I enjoyed Jamie Woon though his voice is a little commercial for my tastes, in the D&B/Dubstep category Nero excites me the most. It would be great to see an artist other than Pendulum getting some viscous breaks in the charts.

Daley is clearly a big talent, not the kind of thing I spend a lot of time listening to, but the world needs an alternative to Jamie T who can sing in tune. 

The Naked and Famous are perhaps a little too indebted to MGMT on the evidence of what I've heard, but there's always a place in my heart for sunny pop music. 

No clips on the BBC site but The Vaccines sound like a strange hybrid of Mumford and Sons and Interpol topped off with the fantastic baritone of Justin Young. I found a clip of them playing on Jools Holland you can check out. I'll eat my hat if these guys don't make it (Which naturally means they are doomed)

Warpaint are capable of dreamy loveliness, but Undertow sounds a little too much like a rewrite of Polly by Nirvana to my ears.

While Clare Maguire and Jessie J may well end up being huge they do nothing for me. 

I think Anna Calvi has the potential to produce a world class album. Jezebel is a curiosity, but  Moulinette is a wonderful track.

I'm not going to make any predictions of who will be the true breakthrough, but even the beeb picked Little Boots over Lady Gaga.

Humble Bundle 2 Reviews - Machinarium

The Humble Bundle 2 is available for another couple of days (Total at time of writing over $1.5!) They have recently added Steam access to the games and thrown in the games from the original bundle free of charge so there is even more reason to grab a copy if you haven't already.

The second review in the series is Machinarium which is an old skool point and click adventure in the style of Monkey Island and the like.

The game tells the tale of a little robot called Josef who has been dumped in the wilderness by gangsters who have kidnapped his girlfriend. You have to traverse across several screens full of puzzles and quests to get her back and thwart the evil robots.  

Like Braid what sets this apart from the crowd is the spectacular artistic direction and story telling.  Everything from the little touches in the animation (Like the way Josef slides down banisters, or dreams about his girlfriend when you leave him to his own devices ) to the wonderful scribbley line drawings that take the place of dialogue screams attention to detail. 

The puzzles are tricky, but satisfying when you complete them and in a genius move a full guide is always available but each page can only be accessed by playing a time consuming mini game meaning you only ever look when you really need to, 

I straight up loved this game. It's fairly short (I finished it in a couple of evenings of casual play) and has zero replay value, but both as a narrative and as a lateral thinking puzzle it has been one of my favourite games of the year.

Humble Bundle 2 Reviews - Braid

For those of you who aren't familiar The Humble Bundle is a collection of games by top indie devs which are collected together and sold for a limited time as a pay what you like bundle with a proportion of the money going to charity. I bought the first bundle and was really pleased with it. All of the games were released for Mac. Windows and Linux, were totally DRM free and could be downloaded as many times as you like. After release several of the games were made open source and also made available to download via Steam.

The Humble Bundle 2 has just been released (http://www.humblebundle.com/) and I excitedly bought it on the first day (At time of writing it is available for another 5 days) .

I thought I would give a few thoughts on each game as I played it and the first up is Braid.

Braid is probably the most famous game in the bundle as it has already been a critically acclaimed hit on the Xbox arcade and PS3 where it has a 93% Metacritic score so you know you are in for something pretty special. The game is a simple platformer in the style of Mario, but what make it stand out are the fantastic graphics which look like a water colour painting and a superb orchestral soundtrack. 

The core mechanic of the game is based around the protagonist Tim's ability to rewind time. This is used to great effect as there is no need to have any kind of menu or HUD. All bad things (monsters, spikes, fire) are instant kills and you simply rewind time and try again if you fail so the screen is kept completely free of score, lives, etc. The time rewinding mechanic is used for some mind bending puzzles and is tightly tied into the plot which explores the idea that someone with power over time could erase all their mistakes and annoyances and if you could would be the right thing to do.

Braid is an excellent game and at £7.99 on PSN you could easily purchase the bundle for that price and enjoy the rest of the games as a bonus.