Hackers bring down British police website

Reuters) – Hackers knocked offline a website run by the British police Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA), which targets organized crime in Britain and overseas.
Lulz Security, a loosely aligned hacker group that said it brought down the SOCA website on Monday, has gone after a long list of government and corporate websites. Like many others, the SOCA attack was likely a denial-of-service attack in which Lulz hackers bombarded the site with so many messages that it went offline.
"We are aware of claims that the SOCA website has been attacked. The picture is not clear at this time, but we are investigating the matter with our service provider," said SOCA spokesman Richard Sellors.
SOCA's website went down for a bit on Monday but then was brought back up. On Monday evening, SOCA decided to take the site down for the night to take the pressure off its Internet service provider, which works with a variety of local businesses and organizations, said Sellors.
Sellors said that the affected website was purely for public information and that the hackers had no access to confidential data or information about ongoing operations.
Lulz has also hacked into a U.S. Senate server, and claimed responsibility for temporarily knocking offline the CIA's public website.
In a posting on Sunday, Lulz Security declared that the "Lulz Lizard battle fleet is now declaring immediate and unremitting war" on governments and security companies.
As part of that, Lulz, which derives its name from the plural variant of Internet slang for "laugh out loud," urged its followers to hack into and deface government websites.
"Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including e-mail spools and documentation. Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments," Lulz said in the statement on Sunday.
Lulz said it was working with Anonymous, a second international group of hackers.
The groups' stated goals have been murky. In the past, Anonymous has sought to support Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, who face charges after releasing U.S. government documents as part of Wikileaks.
Lulz has also sought to punish Sony Corp for failing to secure data but did so by releasing the data of Sony customers, exposing them to potential identity theft.
Meanwhile, a less public and more damaging series of hacks have targeted the International Monetary Fund and RSA, the security division of EMC Corp.
(Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in London; Editing by Gunna Dickson and Steve Orlofsky)

Gunman updates Facebook, gets help from friends during 16-hour standoff with police

For most of us, it's hard enough to navigate our daily grind while still remembering to check out the latest personal news bits on our social network of choice, but Jason Valdez of Utah has no such trouble. In fact, he was able to ward off Salt Lake City's finest SWAT officers, keep a young woman as his hostage, and update his Facebook all at the same time. He even went so far as to add a few new friends to his social network account during the scary ordeal.

After Salt Lake police had discovered Valdez was staying at a local hotel, they attempted to take him into custody on a felony drug charge. When Valdez saw the law closing in on him, he attempted to make a last stand at the Western Colony Inn, and began his string of Facebook updates. His first post read, "I'm currently in a standoff ...kinda ugly, but ready for whatever."

Over the next 16 hours, Valdez posted numerous additional updates, and even took photos of himself and the woman the police identified as his hostage. His friends and family posted dozens of replies, both urging him to stand down without incident, and even attempting to help him avoid arrest. One friend warned, "Gunner in the bushes stay low," to which the suspect replied "Thank you homie, good looking out."

Eventually, the SWAT team took the hotel by force, though they never fired a shot. They secured the hostage without injury while Valdez, in a last attempt to evade an arrest, shot himself in the chest with a pistol. He remains in critical condition. Police have yet to decide whether they will charge the suspect's social network contacts who were offering him aid during the standoff.

How Kenya ICT Board Kills the Spirit of Tech Innovators and Content Generators

This post is inspired by the spirit of transparency as enshrined in the new constitution. So please nobody should hold it against me nor take it personal. When the voice of the voiceless is dimmed with shouts of traitor! traitor! , we take it upon ourselves to sneak it through this medium and make sure that it is heard loud enough.

We must first acknowledge that the Kenyan government through ICT Board is trying in various ways to market the country’s ICT potential as well as help techies look for opportunities elsewhere around the world. Through the seminars, conferences and informal meetups all over, the ICT Board has at-least made a move to show that they can work. But it is not even above average effort according to me. The hype is just around a few people in Nairobi and not even the middle class communities of techies have been fully roped into the tech idea.

You want to know how Kenya ICT Board stands accused? Read below;

1. Favoritism and Class of Winners Around Paul Kukubo and Key ICT Board Managers
This issue has been a bone of contention of many Kenyans who are into ICT. Many of the trailblazers in tech in Kenya who works freelance developers, engineers and systems analysts have been locked out of key meetings of Kenya ICT Board. We have very many Kenyans who did set up or trained in such firms as Africa Online, Aptech, IS, Fintech and even Symphony but are now mostly freelaancing.

The fact that they like things formal and have not had a chance to bulldoze their way into the office of Paul Kukubo has meant that they are locked out from key events. There is a feeling within Kenya ICT Board that the few mailing lists individuals runs are the best advertising avenues. They then leave out those whom because they have contrary opinions, have been left out of the mailingg lists. Whenever you have had a contest, it has first been shared within the circle of friends of former 3 Mice and Paul Kukubo and then the immediate friends whom Kukubo has worked with on projects.

That is how you will find same individuals sit on judging panels of Pasha and Local Content. They have no other qualification apart from having a basic education and being the friends of the right people. You will learn why below. And even the media nowadays they invite first channels run by friends of Kukubo. I have heard confessions from friends who work with such channels and tells me that Paul Kukubo called them personally to go cover such events while Kenya ICT Board supposedly maintains a media mailing list which they rarely used.

2. Management at ICT Board / Ignorance and Poor Judging of Key Contests
You have seen ICT Board call for proposals for the local contents and the Pasha centres loans. First the Local Contents grant was a poorly organised and executed idea that it smells strongly of fraud. Friends of Kaburo Kobia, Paul Kukubo and key personnel at Kenya ICT Board were called and informed that what was needed was a mobile application and not necessarily a content of any nature. So we have found out that firms were set up for the competition with mobile platforms generated using app wizards for mainly Nokia’s OVI store.

The app platforms were later hyped by Paul Kukubo and Kaburo Kobia with the other Tandaa proponents through the tech talks. 90% of the entities and platforms presented by the winners are non-existent just less than one year later. Many applicants who have been generating contents years before even the idea of rewarding content generators was mooted are asking if it was a contest to reward for content or for platforms. We talked to 3 organisation which applied for the funds and they say that when they contacted Kaburo Kobia to ask what was the criteria because none of those awarded had content, Kaburo called them “loud mouthed bitches who were mourning over a missed opportunity”.

And some of the judging in contests like digital content grant contest were also questioned with those who were shortlisting asking why Jessica Colaco and Professor Thairu were on the panel? None of them have done any serious content they cant talk about. Prof. Thairu is an educationist and Jessica Colaco is a mobile developer. So you find like one of the judges called Kenya Buzz before the shortlisting and asked them that the panel would be looking for a mobile app. The Kenya Buzz team jumped on the idea and immediately generated a mobile app and they won the grant. Almost one year down the line, they don’t have the content they won the grant for. Their mobile apps are a sketch of what the grant could do.

And so the Kenya Buzz directors who are all British, Alix Grubel, Marta and Nicholas saw it as an opportunity to get a piece of the Kenyan pie which they were invited to taste. Not that the money made any difference to them considering that they are doing consultancies in various fields and from the physical magazine they could also generate enough money to develop a better mobile app for iOS, Windows or Symbian phones but they just don’t see a better market there yet. This is just but one example.

3. All Kenya ICT Board Concentrated in Nairobi

The duty of preaching the ICT evangelism has been left to poorly equipped college graduates who travel upcountry and will not have good internet connection or sometimes even a laptop to keep in touch. Kenya ICT Board has jumped onto the bus of iHub and you would think that Kenyan government built the iHub. Instead of harnessing such synergies regionally, Paul Kukubo and his gang are resting on his laurels and relying on the empty buzz the Kenyan techies have created online to chest thump and claim rewards.

Not much effort is being put into listening to Kenyans in Mandera, Eldoret, Kakamega, Kisii or even Mombasa to understand where there problems lie in promoting the use of ICT. You can imagine what the amount being used to host 50 or so people in Serena can do in a place like Kisii in promoting ICT. If Kenya ICT Board was to hold such a meeting, they would transport all the layabouts from Nairobi to Kisii for sight seeing and off the city tours.

4. Contrary Opinion is from the Devil

If you dare speak ill of the efforts of Kenya ICT Board managers, you will be blacklisted from key events, bad mouthed and even given secret labels from the mongrels kept to bark and earn their keep through the joomla and wordpress installation projects marketed around as web design assignments. Dare ask Paul Kukubo a question on any of the mailing lists and you will see how many of the mongrels will jump on your neck and accuse you of all manner of things including “plotting to kill the good manager”.

To better the workings at Kenya ICT Board and other state organs, contrary opinion MUST be listened to. It is not a matter of being holier-than-thou Himself but these are state funds.

We will be updating this post as time goes by but you can comment below on what you feel about the Kenyan ICT Board and its operations.