More Zonkyness

SSH And The “Chinese Bots”

Computing, Security, Working Notes No Responses »

Apr 012024

So I was reading 𝕏 and came across one of those memes showing “Chinese bots” making connections to “open” SSH ports to Internet accessible servers. The suggestion to turn off password authentication in favour of public/private key authentication was certainly a sensible suggestion (on a very simplistic level it effectively makes a very strong “password”).

But the “Chinese bots” thing sort of irritated me a bit, so I decided to trawl my personal firewall logs looking for attempts to connect to my ssh port(s). Even ignoring the IPv6 probes, there were 1251 different addresses probing my network (just one public IPv4 address) in the months of March so far.

Why is this irritating? Because the addresses of the machines attempting to break into a non-existent ssh service here are those of compromised machines. They may be in China, or the USA, Russia, etc. but that in no way betrays who is controlling those “bots”.

Anyway, for some data :-

Count	Country
502,	US USA 840 United States
128,	CN CHN 156 China
97,	KR KOR 410 Korea, Republic of
33,	SG SGP 702 Singapore
27,	BG BGR 100 Bulgaria
26,	RU RUS 643 Russian Federation
22,	HK HKG 344 Hong Kong
22,	GB GBR 826 United Kingdom
20,	DE DEU 276 Germany
16,	SE SWE 752 Sweden

And “China” isn’t even in the lead in this case! I have included just the top 10 as a long list of random countries with one or two robots isn’t very enlightening.

The key point here is that the national identity of the compromised host attacking tells you nothing about where the true attacker is from. Russia is quite a likely candidate given it’s status as a rogue nation with a known tolerance for cyber criminals (as long as they co-operate with the state when the state needs their skills), but that is just background knowledge.

JK Rowling Denying The Holocaust

General No Responses »

Mar 242024

There is currently a furore about JK Rowling having denied that the Nazis targeted transfolk with a comment specifically stating that the poster should “check their sources” which becomes amusing …

For the record, the historical suppression of the world’s first institute covering trans healthcare is a matter of record. And although I’m not going to chase down threads to verify this, there is very little doubt in my mind that transfolk would have been sent to concentration camps as homosexual men were.

Now the average person might be forgiven for being ignorant about the suppression of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft; after all those who aren’t interested in the subject will make an assumption that the “Holocaust” was just about the killing of the Jews.

It is true that non-Jewish victims are somewhat less publicised and that most groups weren’t targeted for annihilation as the Jews and Roma were, but being worked to death in a concentration camp with random and brutal punishment up to and including murder isn’t a kind fate. And certainly qualifies as repression.

Any public figure should be more careful about denying that something did or did not happen.

I have just seen a video claiming that JK Rowling isn’t a Holocaust denier because the word Holocaust refers specifically to Jewish victims. Well, there’s a discussion to be had about that – but it should be noted that the Jewish have a specific word for what happened to them (Shoah), which some people believe leaves the word “Holocaust” free to use in reference to all of the victims of the Nazis; it certainly works better than “Nazi crimes against humanity”.

B&W Picture of the entrance to Winchester's Great Hall — Entering The Great Hall

Is A New Tory Party Leader A Good Idea?

Politics No Responses »

Mar 172024

Well yes, the Tories need a new party leader to rebuild their party after the next election. Before the election? The new leader will just be a sacrificial lamb that’ll probably be thrown out onto the slag heap (hopefully a nice soggy wet one) at the next election.

It’ll almost certainly not save them from being wiped out (and that’s from 6 months ago; if anything, things are even worse today) at the next election.

An overwhelming majority of people want an election now and changing leaders now in what will be seen as yet another undemocratic move (it isn’t; it’s just people like to think they’re voting for a particular PM when they’re just voting for their MP) is likely to make the Tories even more unpopular.

If I were Starmer, I’d launch a parliamentary vote of no confidence as soon as the replacement showed up in parliament :-

The people don’t want you.
We don’t want you.
The other parties here don’t want you.
And if they were honest, half of those on your side don’t want you either.
– Me putting words in Starmer’s mouth.

He’d lose of course, but the people will see it as an honest attempt at doing the right thing.

A long road to the gatehouse — Dover Castle Gateway

Reforming the Commons Pigsty

Politics No Responses »

Mar 132024

The current crop of clownish criminals in the House of Commons just goes to show that the regulation need a bit of a brush-up. Here’s a few of my suggestions :-

Secret electronic voting. Which has the downside that we can’t see what our MPs voted for or against, but does allow them greater latitude in ignoring the party whip when it comes to things that shouldn’t be passed.
Electronic voting should make this easier: MPs should recuse themselves when their vote could influence their income – for example MPs who are also landlords should not vote on motions involving landlordism.
MPs should be allowed to do jobs outside of their work as an MP, but their income should be capped at an hourly rate equivalent to their salary as an MP; any extra goes into the general taxation fund. Sound unfair? There’s plenty of senior public sector workers with exactly that sort of contract. It would allow MPs to keep “in practice” but not encourage them to seek outside work.
MPs who change party allegiance or lose the whip should be subject to the same recall petition mechanism that being found guilty of “wrongdoing” makes available.
Accusations of lying should be permitted which should invoke an investigation. A false accuser gets sanctioned (which opens them up to a recall petition) and an accurate accusation gets the accused sanctioned (likewise).

I’m sure there’s a whole bunch more to add but that’s enough for now. I’m sure MPs will hate it, but to be honest, the more an MP hates a regulation, the more likely it is to be useful.

B&W picture of the sea and some old wooden posts. — Ruins

Right-Wing Terrorism In The UK

Politics No Responses »

Mar 102024

The frothing-at-the-mouth loons on the far right are all over themselves whining about Islamic terrorism including counting the weekly marches against what is happening in Palestine as Islamic terrorism. Islamic terrorism in the UK is a legitimate problem, but the elephant in the room is far-right terrorism. There’s a fair amount of it going on :- (sourced from the Wikipedia article listing terrorist attacks in the UK)

2022-10-30: The Dover firebomb attack.
2019-03-16: Vincent Fuller “used a baseball bat to attack the home of a neighbour of Indian descent and several cars driven by non-white drivers, shouting “Kill Muslims” and “white supremacy” according to witnesses, before stabbing a 19-year-old Bulgarian man”
2017-06-19: The Finsbury Park van attack.
2016-06-16: The murder of Jo Cox.
2013-04-29: : Pavlo Lapshyn, a Ukrainian student and right-wing extremist, fatally stabbed Birmingham resident Mohammed Saleem.
2013-06-21: He detonated a home-made bomb outside a mosque in Walsall.
2013-06-28: He detonated a second home-made bomb near a mosque in Wolverhampton.
2013-07-12: He attacked a mosque in Tipton with an improvised explosive device containing nails.
1999-04-17: The London nail bombings.
1999-04-24: The London nail bombings.
1999-04-29: The London nail bombings.

Excluding a 2007 attack that was anti-authoritarian in nature (so could be said to be either right-wing or left-wing), and a joint IRA and Red Faction attack in 1993, the last genuine far left terrorist attack was in the early 1970s from the Angry Brigade.

Now that list of 11 attacks isn’t huge and hardly compares with the number of Islamic extremist attacks, but it’s there. And more than justifies keeping a close eye on right-whingers.

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