Monthly Archives: August 2011

Is homosexuality the sickest sin there is?

This question was not asked by a religious extremist in the middle east. It is part of a year 10 School assignment here in Perth. Armadale Christian College asked the question: “Is homosexuality the sickest sin there is?” 

Another question on the assignment asks what Gods opinion of Homosexuality is, then points out a Bible verse describing it as an ‘abomination’. As usual with these types of stories someone tries to palm it of as extremism in order to distance themselves from it.

One student’s relative, James Notman, praised the Minister’s quick action on the matter, and said such “extremist” teachings could “seriously damage the mental well-being” of some children at a time of life when questions of sexuality were of huge importance. –PerthNow

However this is not an extremist viewpoint. Christians who preach hateful messages are simply being true to their faith, NOT extremist but honest.

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. –Leviticus 18:22

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. -Leviticus 20:13

It’s good to see a Christian school teaching the faith with honesty instead of the modern day bullshit where primitive world views pretend to have some level of morality. At least this school attempted to preach their faith honestly instead of watering it down.

So Christians, is homosexuality the sickest sin there is? Your god seems to think so. If you believe that the Bible is the word of god then you’re either an asshole for answering ‘yes’ or a dishonest douche for answering ‘no’. This is not the sort of thing you can simply pass off as “EXTREMIST” when it is printed in your own holy book. Either you believe in the hateful messages of the bible or you defy your own god. How then can you claim that your god is omniscient, unless you’re an immoral asshole?

Is Personal Philosophy more important than your child's health?

Looks like that public health menace is at it again. Meryl Dorey has just sent out an email to her followers complaining about a Government Health care initiative. I couldn’t find a source for it, but according to Dorey the government is going to require welfare parents to take their children to a GP in order to check the child’s health. If the parent is not looking after their child’s medical needs then they could lose the taxpayer funded handout. (citation needed)

This sounds like an excellent initiative if the government is going to give parents financial support then it makes sense for them to check that the child is cared for medically. Although I think this should be extended to all parents, not just those claiming financial assistance from Centrelink.

As predicted the Anti-Vaxxers have a problem with this, as they seem to with health care in general. Why anyone would be so against health care, especially early childhood health care always escapes me. Meryl Dorey in particular seems to value personal philosophy more than scientifically proven medical procedure. Here is part of her email:

What if your primary care practitioner is not a GP? What if your health philosophy has indicated that mainstream medicine is not in your child’s best interests? What if you are a Christian Scientist whose religion says that you don’t see doctors?

Are there exemptions available for those who don’t normally see doctors? And if the doctor – whose philosophy and practices differ from you own – determines that your child is at risk, what are the potential outcomes? –Meryl Dorey

While some people many indeed value their own personal ideology more than the health of their children, fortunately such people are just a minority of idiotic fringe dwellers. I’m sure most parents recognise the need for their child to visit a competent medical professional. A person does not have the right to deny their child health care just because it conflicts with their own; often unqualified ideas about medicine. I hope the government starts taking a hard line approach to people who think that their personal philosophy is more important than health care.

DDoS attacks are a cowards 'protest'.

There seems to be this belief floating around that the DDoS attacks that are carried out by the so called “hacker” group Anonymous are the equivalent of a legitimate protest. Some members of Anonymous even have the audacity to liken themselves to civil rights protesters; the irony.

Launching a Denial of Service attack against somebody you wish to silence is not the equivalent of a virtual sit-in for several reasons the one of which is accountability. When you conduct a sit-in protest you are held accountable for it, it’s an illegal activity (trespass) for which you can be prosecuted. In contrast when you lunch a DDoS attack on someone’s website over the internet with or without a proxy server you are removing the accountability for your actions. You are hiding like a sniveling coward.

It takes a certain amount of courage to stand-up for what you believe in and throughout history we have seen many examples of just that. People standing up for what they believe in from the civil rights movement to the Tiananmen Square protesters and countless others throughout history. Many of these people put themselves on the line to stand-up for their belief and ideologies and for many the price was high. It is at the very least a tremendous insult to these activists that a group of cowards hiding behind an IP address on the internet could ever compare themselves to real activists.

The group Anonymous is built upon hiding as opposed to standing-up. They are not activists but cowards who hide online and attack from the shadows some even employ the use of proxy networks to further cower away behind their keyboards.

If you think I’m being harsh on Anonymous then take a look at this and explain the logic to me because I cannot find it.

Lastly, they set up this website called mybart.gov and they stored their members information with virtually no security. The data was stored and easily obtainable via basic sqli. Any 8 year old with a internet connection could have done what we did to find it. On top of that none of the info, including the passwords, was encrypted. It is obvious BART does no give a fuck about its customers, funders and tax payers,THE PEOPLE.

Thus below we are releasing the User Info Database of MyBart.gov, to show that BART doesn’t give a shit about it’s customers and riders and to show that the people will not allow you to kill us and censor us. This is but the one of many actions to come. We apologize to any citizen that has his information published, but you should go to BART and ask them why your information wasn’t secure with them. –Anonymous Dataleak

Wow, did I just read that? Anonymous is critical of BART.gov for not taking adequate steps to secure customer information. So in response they steal the data themselves and publish it on the web for the whole world to find. They then apologise to the users who have had their information published.

That right there shows the childish attitude towards accountability that characterises the group that calls itself ‘Anonymous’. Protecting privacy and free-speech while violating both? What a joke these so called ‘hackivists’ really are. You cannot claim to defend Freedom of Speech while attacking websites and you cannot claim to value the privacy of follow citizens while simultaneously publishing their personal information on the web.

Lulzsec and Anonymous script kiddie SQL Injection.

I have been following the activities of the so called ‘hacker group’ calling itself “Anonymous” for some time now. Not because I support their activities but because I find the whole Anonymous, Lulzsec and Wikileaks debacle interesting.

While there is certainly a valid argument that Wikileaks is doing some good in the world the same cannot be said for Anonymous and Lulzsec. Although unlike Anonymous at least Lulzsec is up front about why they attack other peoples systems. They admit to doing it for fun and entertainment, whereas Anonymous tries to justify themselves with Hypocritical bullshit. Such as claiming to defend Free-Speech while simultaneously taking down the websites of perceived opponents.

Anonymous even tried to take this blog offline when I wrote the article titled “Anonymous Script Kiddies are not defending the internet.” at the time I didn’t recognise the traffic pattern as an attempted SQL Injection because I wasn’t expecting one and nor was I familiar with the tool they use to “hack” peoples websites. Needless to say the attempted SQL Injection failed and I was able to remain online.

It turns out the method by which these groups infiltrate websites is remarkably unsophisticated. The tool being used by both Anonymous and Lulzsec to infiltrate websites is called Havij, it’s a GUI based SQL Injection tool and is available for download here.

It is only after testing Havij against my own system that I recognised the signatures left in the server access logs by the Havij software. The most concerning thing about this is how easy it is to protect WordPress and a variety of other content management software from this type of vulnerability; yet these attacks keep on happening. In most cases securing your website is simply a matter of keeping the software upto date.

While Lulzsec and Anonymous are using unsophisticated attacks, if they inject a vulnerable website that happens to contain sensitive information it can have direr consequences for the user. As we have seen with the recent Sony hacks in which millions of credit cards were stolen.

I believe the best way to defend yourself from the kids at Lulzsec and Anonymous is by understanding the treat. I don’t endorse trying an SQL Injection on someone’s website without their consent. Use your own system or create a Honeypot.

Here are some resources I have found. To get started with SQL Injections.

SQL Injection Using Havij

Basics And Working of SQL Injection Attacks

Trick for Advanced SQL Injection

I do not condone any criminal activity, nor do I support the actions of either Anonymous or Lulzsec. I am only sharing what I have learned so far. Both screen shots were captured from legal penetration testing of my own systems setup expressly for that purpose.

Greenpeace are crimminals not activists.

The so called “environmental” group Greenpeace consists predominantly of liars and frauds who have no problem resorting to criminal behaviour in order to push their idiology. A group of Greenpeace criminals recently attacked a valuable scientific experiment here in Australia.

Three Greenpeace activists broke into a scientific farm near Canberra overnight on 14 July and destroyed a crop of genetically modified wheat (see photo). The farm belongs to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Australian national science agency, and the crop was part of research into developing genetically modified crop plants with enhanced nutritional value.

Suzanne Cory, president of the Australian Academy of Sciences, issued a statement in which she condemned the attack. “For an organisation that claims to be dedicated to the protection of the environment, this is an unconscionable act,” she said. –Nature.com

These criminals have destroyed a scientific experiment because they just happened to disagree with it. There is no activism here only vandalism. Greenpeace does not care about science. All they care about is pushing their unscientific dogma and will resort to vandalism and thuggery any time they don’t get their own way. It is time for the worlds media to stop referring to Greenpeace as “environmental activists” and start labeling them as the anti-scientific criminals they are.

Wilson da Silva from Cosmos magazine has an excellent summary of what Greenpeace has become.

GREENPEACE WAS ONCE a friend of science, helping bring attention to important but ignored environmental research. These days, it’s a ratbag rabble of intellectual cowards intent on peddling an agenda, whatever the scientific evidence.

It was once the most active, independent and inspiring civilian group for the environment. Whether riding zodiacs alongside boats carrying barrels of toxic waste to be dumped in the open sea, or campaigning against CFCs and HFCs that were depleting the ozone layer, Greenpeace did admirable work.

But in the last decade or so, Greenpeace abandoned the rigour of science. When the science has been inconvenient, Greenpeace chooses dogma. Which is why it has a zero-tolerance policy on nuclear energy, no matter how imperative the need to remove coal and gas from electricity production. Or why it is adamant organic farming is the only way forward for agriculture, when organic could not feed the world’s population today. –Cosmos

Now that these ratbag vandals have my attention it probably won’t be the last time I mention them. Especially if they are so insistent on attacking scientific progress.

The Census is more important than your Jedi.

The census campaign is just days away and I would like to point out writing Jedi, Pastafarian or anything else along those lines will not get counted. Neither Pastafarian or Jedi is a recognised religion in Australia as a result identifying yourself as one gets you marked as “not defined”. The problem with this is that Government policy is sometimes guided by the census statistics so if a percentage of people are recorded as “not defined” the Government will use those incorrect statistics in policy planning by assuming the accuracy of the census data.

But it’s not just the government that use census data. Many lobby groups and corporations also use data collected by the census. If you’re non-religious and you mark anything other than “No Religion” (which is a recognised and counted response) then you are balancing the statistics in favour of religion. In 2006 55,000 identified themselves as Jedi, not a single one of those individuals was counted in the “non-religious” category as a result of writing Jedi instead of ticking the “No Religion” box.

I think it’s a fairly safe bet that people who mock religion are predominantly non-religious and while it may be fun to mark Jedi or Pastafarian on the census form doing so will ensure that you aren’t counted correctly and as a result religious lobby groups have more power to persuade the government because statistics may show fewer non-religious people than there actually are.

Another way that people screw the statistics is by marking the faith they were brought up in despite no longer belonging to that faith. So unless you genuinely believe in the doctrine of a particular faith the only thing you should be marking on the census form in “No Religion”.

The census is all about statistics, and ensuring that the government has the most accurate dataset possible is that best way to ensure that your interests are represented in government policy and decision making. So don’t screw the statistics in favor of religion: instead answer the census honestly to ensure that you are not incorrectly counted.

No Religion? Just mark “No Religion”.

More information is available at: censusnoreligion.org