About Russian sites reported as malware and how to stay safe (and free!)

Dear friends,

Just a short note about the issue of (the very good) Взгляд.ру (URL: http://www.vz.ru) getting flagged as "malware attack site" or something similar, it could be due to a) something wrong with the site b) something wrong with an advertisement on the site c) political censorship.  The point is this: this is a great opportunity for you all to drop Windows and/or Mac and switch to Linux (properly called "GNU/Linux").  For a list of options I recommend please see the "GNU/Linux distributions I recommend" box on the lower right of this page.  Then, use a browser which has an "AdBlock" extension.  FireFox and Chrome are the two I mostly use.  FireFox also has extensions like "FlashBlock" and the "NoScripts Security Suite" which provide an additional level of security.  The latter require a tad more IT knowledge to use.  

The bottom line is this: if you are using Windows - you are constantly exposing yourself to a huge amount of very different risks; if you are using Mac, you are much better off, but you are grossly overpaying for your software and you are not safe from malware approved by Mac.  The only solution is to use free software which, for most people, means Linux (though *BSD is an excellent solution for the tech-savvy).

Here are a few links for those of you interested in trying out the "free world":

• What is Free Software (must read)
• From Windows to Linux
• Linux is NOT Windows (must read)
• The table of equivalents / replacements / analogs of Windows software in Linux
• Linux Mint 15 User's Guide (for those who will begin with the Mint distribution - which I what I would suggest for most beginners)
• Xubuntu Documentation (for those who will begin with the Xubuntu distribution)
• Trisquel Documentation (for those who will begin with the Trisquel distribution)

One more thing: contrary to what many ignorant people think, Linux is not hard to learn at all.  In fact, it is much easier than Windows.  However, for a person who learned all the wrong habits on Windows it is not easy to re-learn the logical way to do things, which is how Linux works.  Not only will you computer run according to a different logic, but your way of solving problems also will have to change.  For example, instead of paying a fortune to speak with a person with a thick accent for one hour and not get your problem solved, you will learn how to get help for free and in minutes from something called an "IRC" or, at least, a forum.  You will also have to find out how to beat the many petty schemes corporations are constantly cooking up to try to force you to use their bloatware.  The good news is that if Windows and Mac are corporation-centric worlds, the world of Linux is community-centered, just like this blog, and there are literally thousands of folks our there willing to offer a helping hand for no other remuneration than a heartfelt "thank you" from you.

Mind you - today I still got the stupid warning about vz.ru while using FireFox on a Linux computer, that will not disappear as it is OS-independent, but I could simply ignore that warning and waltz away happily to that "dangerous" site.

Which brings me to one small word of caution.  There is what I call "corporate Linux" out there.  Names like Ubuntu, RedHat and others.  My advice - stay away from them and their products.  However, products derived from them like Mint or Xubuntu are okay to use as long as they are piloted by a community, not a corporation.  I would also recommend you stick to so-called APT-based distribution or "Debian derivatives", which is the case of all of the distros listed in the "GNU/Linux distributions I recommend" box.

That's it.  Sorry for this techie-sidebar, but I wanted to remind you all that you don't have to put up with all this 'malware' nonsense and that you can enjoy both freedom and security on your computers.

Now back to the important business at hand.

Cheers,

The Saker 

PS: I will not have the time to reply to any comments to this post (nevermind private emails!).   I have to keep my priorities straight. Right now the priority #1 is the situation in the Ukraine, not IT discussions. Sorry.

Internet censorship in full swing in the USA (again)

First we had "Evil Joe" Lieberman with his "Internet kill switch" and now they are at it again, this time with a "Protect IP Act".  The thugs in Congress are always up to no good, usually some crafty way of making the rich richer, the poor poorer, to further reduce any civil liberty left and, last but not least, to do whatever the hell the Israel lobby demands from them.  Censoring the Internet is a particularly "good" idea, from their point of view, as it would contribute to making US millionaires and billionaires richer, and it would also provide a terrific way of cracking down on anti-Israel, anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian (i.e. "terrorist) websites.

What AIPAC's minions in Congress do simply not understand is that the technology needed to defeat all their plans is already out there.  For example, take a look at the following information about the FreedomBox:

FreedomBox Foundation

FreedomBox at Debian

Eben Moglen discusses the freedom box on CBS news

or watch these two videos of Eben Moglen speaking on the topic "Freedom in the Cloud"

Presentation

Q&A

"Evil Joe" and his cohorts will fight freedom everywhere, on the Internet and in the real world, but at least on the Internet they are clearly out-gunned by the new technologies (software and hardware) which already exist and which shall be deployed in the near future.

This, at least, is a battle we already know we will win.

The Saker

Why Political Liberty Depends on Software Freedom More Than Ever

'Iran to unveil national OS soon'

Press TV reports:

Iranian Communications and Information Technology Minister Reza Taqipour says a national open source operating system is on the way.

“The operating system will be primarily installed for industrial centers and organizations and then home users could utilize it if they are willing,” Mehr news agency quoted Taqipour as saying on Monday.

He said that the efforts to develop the new project have been accelerated as the existing operating systems in the country are susceptible to becoming infected with malwares and other malicious software programs finding their way into the systems via networks.

Taqipour also pointed out that an open source operating system would help pinpoint penetrable portholes in systems and said, “Many countries are turning to the open source [OS] as a solution to this problem.

The Iranian minister noted that the project is aimed at preventing other systems from breaking into local networks to steal data from the systems in the country.

Is anybody at Press TV or al-Manar paying attention?

Interesting story this morning on the BBC: it appears that some unidentified "nation state" has put huge efforts into creating a sophisticated worm with "incredible amount of code" "probably targeting "high value" infrastructure in Iran".  Read the full BBC story here; its confirmed by NZZ here and here in English.  The key sentence in the BBC report is this:" it infects Windows machines via USB keys".

That's right, this super-dooper-worm can only infect Windows based machines.  The Windows operating system has a long and unmachted record  of being the worst operating system ever designed.  Not only does it have a history of collaboration with the US NSA, but all its individual components (Outlook, Word, ISS, the registry, the WinAPI, etc) are terribly designed and highly prone to failures, flaws, bugs and corruption (I will spare you the technical details).  In contrast, there are other operating systems out there which are highly stable and secure, and which are available at zero cost: GNU/Linux of course, but also the three BSDs - OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD.  For a price, you can also get Mac OSX which, being based on BSD, is also far superior to anything Microsoft ever produced (all these operating systems are either based on, or derived from, the UNIX family of operating systems which typically run on larger computers).

Furthermore, Windows is what is called "bloatware": the underlying code of Microsoft applications is inevitably large (which is not a quality, the rule of thumb being that each time you double the size of the source code, the number of bugs in it *squares*!) and requires recent, powerful and expensive hardware to run.

The amount of money wasted by any organization using Windows is absolutely staggering.  Think about it:

1) Being very crash-prone, Windows requires constant attention for system administrators just to keep it running.

2) Being highly insecure, Windows requires constant and sophisticated efforts by system administrators to keep it as secure as possible.

3) Windows licenses are cumbersome to administer and expensive to pay for.

4) Windows bloatware running hardware being cutting edge is expensive to procure and maintain.

5) Microsoft software is either expensive to purchase or illegal to use without a license.

And yes, the Empire can easily target any computer running windows to create havoc in any country or organization it wants to target.

You would think that with that kind of nightmare scenario, organizations such as Press TV or al-Manar, to pick to examples, would avoid *any* Microsoft product like the plague.  You would be wrong.

Let's check what kind of web servers Press TV and al-Manar are is running (using the Netcraft website):

Press TV: Microsoft-IIS on Windows Server 2003

al-Manar:  Microsoft-IIS on Windows Server 2003

Amazingly, these two websites are running the same toxic witches' brew of IIS on Windows Server 2003.  Which is quite amazing considering that the Press TV servers are run by Irnetco on behalf of the Alalam News IT Department while al-Manar seems to have it's own IT department and hosting.

But that's not all, things get worse once you get to their actual websites.  Al-Manar streams its video signal in the ASPX format which comes from its hyper-proprietary ASP.NET framework.  What about Press-TV?  Press TV offers a choice of Flash and MMS formats.  While MMS is 100% Microsoft, Flash is not, but that is not much of a consolation since Flash is also a terrible format, which uses up a huge amount of memory and which is almost as bad as anything produced by Microsoft.  Alas, Flash is still very ubiquitous and is found on most websites offering video.

Bottom line, not only do Press TV and al-Manar use the absolutely worst (and expensive!) technology out there, they are pushing their supporters to do likewise.

Is that not absolutely crazy?

And its not like we are talking rocket science here, the solution is really simple: run an Apache webserver on a *BSD or Linux server, offer video streaming in various formats like, for example, DemocracyNow! does and run all your other computers (desktops, file and printer servers) on Debian or Ubuntu GNU/Linux.  This is nothing new, it's just a variation of the so-called the "LAMP" technology.  As for the users, they should all be encouraged to use Ubuntu (with the OpenOffice Suite), by far the best and easiest operating system for desktops ever created.

[Yes, 10 years ago it took the equivalent to a PhD. in computer science to run GNU/Linux systems (such as Slackware or Debian).  Nowadays, I can personally attest that Ubuntu is far, far FAR easier to install, configure and use than WindowsXP.  Finally, almost all Windows applications have equivalent, and often better, in the world of free software.  Check here, here, here and here for details]

As an aside, I would note that ALL the so-called "BRIC" countries have already made a fundamental and strategic decision to switch to free software and free themselves from the horrors of "Microsoft-world".

Is anybody at Press TV or al-Manar paying attention?

Maybe you guys want to drop them a note?

info@presstv.ir
info@manartv.com.lb

Freedom Fry - Happy birthday to GNU!