2019 Psychopathy, sadism, empathy, and the motivation to cause harm 2018 Voice Activated Hacks And Cocaine Noodles 2017 Fake News Is Fake News Spam Statistics 2016 2016 Census Surprise ATO Phone scam Spam Statistics 2015 2015 Large number of Security Vulnerabilities July 2015 Spam Statistics 2014 2014 Spam Statistics 2013 2013 Spam Statistics 2012 2012 The Genie Is Out Of The Bottle Trolling For Global Rage Another Spam La Nina Year Spam Statistics June 2012 Media Temple - Back On The Radar Good Christian Men Rejoice 2011 Now It's Just Plain Old Mail Fraud Microsoft Filters Form Not Content Peak Spam Security Shmecurity The Problem Of The Living Dead 2010 Quarantine Sick MS Computers? The Spam Season Starts Soon Creepy Conroy And The Internet Crimewave 2009 Seasons Greetings For The New Decade Phishing Phriendly Outlook Don't Go There Julie! Don't Go! Not Just Famous -- But IN-Famous! Hacked - When Will They Ever Learn? The E-mail Technology Trap Google Easy Money Scams 2008 We Wish You An Unspammy Xmas Terry Swope Spam Incident (2) Webcron Seduced By The Dark Side I've Won The Lottery Again Now I'm In Who's Who American Spam Terry Swope Spam Incident (1) Seven Steps To Internet Security Keeping My Powder Dry Myluvcrush.com Security Risk Spamhaus PBL End Game For Cashblasterpro.com Cashblasterpro.com Spammers The Spam Keeps On Coming McAfee Assess Risk By TLD The Time-Honoured Aussie Sport Of Bank Bashing Now We've Got Hand Spam - What Next? Internet Cops - Who Needs Smart Users When We Have Smart Software? 2005 Good Day To Me ... From 65.54.233.98? The Empire Strikes Back Remember me? TraciLFU4775 from AIM Yahoo regrets to announce ... an outbreak of computer viruses! Gold in them thar hills Florida Spam Zombies At It Again! Plaxo - Black, Grey or White? Unreal profits from Vocalscape Outsider Trading. Blars really does hate 'em I Don't Really Hate Them (much) Tiscali repeat Polish Spam on Rye Flogging A Dead Horse
PGTS Humble Blog Thread: Internet Security/Malware/Spam
	Gerry Patterson. The world's most humble blogger
Edited and endorsed by PGTS, Home of the world's most humble blogger
Hacked - When Will They Ever Learn?
Chronogical Blog Entries: Prev: 26-Jul-2009 Free Software, Anyone? Next: 30-Jul-2009 Hoisted On Their Own Petard
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:31:42 +1000 Recently, the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) has been experiencing a considerable amount of political pressure. First there was a request from the Chinese Console to drop one of the scheduled screenings, a A documentary on the exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer. When the festival organisers refused to comply, two Chinese directors announced that they would pull their films. Next Ken Loach, announced that he was withdrawing his film "Looking For Eric", as a protest concerning Israeli funding. Then on Sunday, it was announced that the MIFF websit had been hacked.

Of course by the time your humble blogger got round to check the site, all evidence had been removed. Looking for the official site in Google brings up a link to http://tickets2.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/

Images of the hack show an almost polite political message under a Chinese flag.

A quick investigation of the MIFF site revealed that it identified itself as a Microsoft-IIS/6.0 server powered by ASP.NET

And herein lies the problem. If one is going to setup a website and start with the poor choice of Microsoft IIS, it is probably not a good idea to compound the problem by not putting it behind a heavily defended (Unix based) firewall.

And if you are determined to carry on with the suicidal course of running such a website, you would be well advised not to upset the Chinese. Although the per-capita computer use in China may not be so large, the total number of computer users is the second largest in the world. And the a lot of those users know about hacking Microsoft systems. In fact when it comes to expertise in hacking Microsoft systems, China may be a world leader.

So if you still think Microsoft IIS is the right system for your weakly defended website, it might be diplomatic to avoid any content that might be construed as offensive to China.

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