It's time to talk politics

With the US Presidential elections only a couple of days away it's time to talk politics. I'm not going to endorse either candidate, though if you know me at all you'll know whom I prefer. I live in New Zealand and obviously can't vote in US elections, but nonetheless the outcome will effect me, just as it will effect the entire world. The hactivist group Anonymous has recently released a video saying that they are watching Karl Rove, previously a senior advisor to George W. Bush, and will release any information that suggests he is trying to steal the election for the Republican party. Remember the "hanging chads" in the 2000 Presidential election that Al Gore lost by just a few hundred votes. Some commentators and bloggers are claiming that the right wing is calling the election "too close to call" to soften people up for a surprise win by Romney when they rig the ballot.

#Anonymous wins vote for Time magazine's most influential person

The hacktivist collective Anonymous has won the popular vote by readers for Time magazine's "most influential person" of 2012. Time magazine revealed yesterday that Anonymous had polled 395,7943 votes in comparison to the runner-up Eric Martin who polled 264,193 votes.
   Notwithstanding the results of their poll Time has declared Jeremy Lin (no I hadn't heard of him either - he's a basketball player) as the most influential person, and ranked Anonymous 36th. If I were chief of network security for Time magazine I don't think I'd be sleeping too easy, as who knows how the hacktivists (and they are legion) will take to this blatant disregard of the peoples' voice. Of course some people are suggesting that Anonymous may have hacked the poll and others are saying that they're not eligible anyway since they're not a "person." The former argument may be true, but the latter isn't since in 1982 Time named the home computer "Person of the Year."

#Anonymous will shut down the Internet this Saturday

Well, that's what the media are claiming. Members of the hacktivist collective, known as Anonymous, will shut down the Internet this Saturday, in Operation Global Blackout, by attacking the Domain Name Servers (DNS) servers that run the Internet. When you type www.anyname.com into your browser the DNS servers translate this into an numeric IP address, like 192.168.1.103, which is the actual physical address of the web server you want to reach. Every computer on the Internet has an IP address, including the one you are reading this on. But, you'd struggle to remember these numbers, so the DNS servers translate, from easy to remember domain names, to hard to remember IP addresses. For example, www.google.com is actually, 74.125.237.148.
   DNS servers are organized into a hierarchy. At the top there are 13 root servers. These contain the master database of all the world's IP addresses and domain names. Below these are tiers of increasingly more local DNS servers that contain copies of the root server databases, right down to DNS servers in you local ISP, to which your computer is connected. Anonymous will not be targeting the root servers, these are very secure, but will be attempting to take down DNS servers in local ISPs and regional telcos that control the backbone of the Internet. Will they succeed? A professional computer security friend of mine says, "...they will be at least partially successfully. Lots of old unpatched top level DNS servers out there."
   You can learn more about the shadowy world of hackers in chapter 12 "Digital Underworld" of The Universal Machine.