India Today Group Hacked - Web Site defaced

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Today while researching and reading about luminaries of India, imagine my surprise when I found that the India Today Group site had been hacked.(Technically speaking Hacked/hacking is the wrong word - read what hack truly means by ESR for more on this.)

India Today Group, as culled from Wikipedia (does anybody look beyond wikipedia and google anymore?!!) is an organisation in existence since 1975. The group impressively has 13 magazines, 4 TV channels, 1 newspaper, classical music label, book publishing and India's only book club.

The time I found the site defaced was at about 10:15PM (Indian Standard Time)- 9th June 2007. The site in itself is intact but the "necessary" default index.html or its various avatars seem to have been replaced by some brazilian script kiddies calling themselves SPYKIDS.

Here is a snapshot of the defaced site.

Click image for enlarged view

Alternatively try the following address ( will work as long as site is not fixed)
http://www.indiatodaygroup.com/itoday/millennium/100people/

Being a good guy (depends on how you look at me) I was thinking of calling or mailing the group and informing them about the same, but on the other hand I think I will just sit here and watch how good the admins at India Today group really are. Will they discover it themselves...Do they read and analyze the logs, are they abreast with the latest or are they just collecting their paychecks while they surf around daily. Lets wait and see.

P.S - A request to readers if they read this post. You can check the site but please don't inform the group about defacement.Lets see how long it takes for them to find out and take corrective action.
He he he - The admins are gonna have a busy day today.

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Who else is watching you !!!

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The way technology is rapidly advancing and so easily available to the common man is scary.

I remember watching a Will Smith / Gene Hackman movie (“Enemy of the State”) where US Govt “security/spy” sattelites are used to track down Will Smith in Real Time. Of course, the scenario looks far fetched, one never really believes the movies, and everything depicted there is either categorized by our brains as either fantasy or computer effects.

We tend to have an ostrich attitude when something like this, does really happen and comes out in the open. I am sure the Indian Government was caught napping too when Google Earth mapped out the entire continent, President House, the Parliament, Airports, sensitive military installations et al. You name it and it was already there.

A person had to just diligently sit and surf, to zero in on a destination.

Of course everybody knows about google earth and how cool it is. Nobody really cares if the “President house” is marked up on the map. Would you? I think you would'nt, but I bet you would care if your home was marked up on the map along with your phone number, and heaven forbid, you happened to be a girl. And this exactly is what is happening on Wikimapia , yes Wikimapia and not Wikipedia. Initially, I was amused to find innumerable “tags” and “descriptions” which were harmless as follows

Haranjit Arora's house in delhi (Hi)

Naseem Bhai's Chawri Bazaar HangOut

Achha Naala

shilpi lives here..ooooh

But then slowly the reaction turned to an alarming one, once I realized people were using this nifty tool to mark addresses of girls coupled with phone numbers in some cases. One can only imagine the nightmare and harassment these girls must be facing if such information is freely available under the public domain.

I am sure the author had good intentions when he developed this tool but as in most cases the fault is not in the technology but how it is being used or misused. On one end of spectrum fire can be used to warm a person, cook food, give light OR napalmed to clear flora, fauna and of course humans.

In the end, I would suggest that you have a look at wikimapia, play around with it and have fun, mark the places which are of real importance, explore the world and places where you have been to, marvel at the technology like I do, but then come back and check your own home or residence and delete any personal information if some stalker or vindictive soul has put up. And you have to repeat the process again and again and again……because now, not only is big brother watching you, but then, so is the whole world.

Why Blog?

Why do people blog? I have been watching the blogging phenomenon for quite some time and could never understand it.

The wikipedia defines a Blog as follows:

“A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.”

The only sense that I could make out of it was that it’s more of a personal diary. Well if it’s a “personal” diary then why is it online? Why would you want millions and billions of people from all over the world to go over your “personal” diary, and are these personal diaries even worth reading. I have tried several but never came across any which could be read at length. The blog tends to focus more on the writers day to day cribbing and his few good joie de vivre. Well, all that is fine but then who would want to read about what god forsaken tragedy has befallen on another soul some millions of miles away. The happier moments are another thing; they at least make the reader smile.

The primary reason, and this is my personal view (as is everything else in my blog), why people write is because they are lonely. Each and everyone of the human species is lonely at one point of time or the other, and since man is a social animal, he begs to be heard or spoken to, and what else could be a better medium in the age of Information Technology than blogging. The poor chap is at least de-stressing himself by writing it all out, instead of keeping it pent up inside, and hoping, that some soul in the other corner of the world will empathize with him and understand what he is going through.

Second reason which I could thing of why people blog is they are not living out there lives to their true potential. The people who are truly living out their life are just going ahead and doing that. There are a million of things one had dreamt about when he was young that he would like to do. Painting, sketching, Hang gliding, golf, learning to play a musical instrument, sailing, fishing, trekking, rock climbing, reading all those classics, learning a foreign language, going to pyramids, inventing your own cipher, running that 8 mile, sculpturing, juggling ad infinitum. So why aren’t we going ahead and doing just that instead of sitting in front of our monitors with glazed eyes for two hours and blogging.

Third reason which comes to mind is the need for recognition and to be a part of a social circle and acceptance by the peer group. Well if one colleague in an office/college/school/community has started a blog, the others are compelled to start their blog too, and after having done it they are compelled by an insane force to inform all their community members to “please read my blog”. It is altogether a different matter if all the members can write equally well or whether they can offer a nugget of information which will help the community and this doesn’t even fall under the domain of blogging. We have forums for that which are much more interactive and informative. Peer blogging, if I may call it so, is more of “I too can write and my blogs better than you.”

There are more points which I would like to elaborate on – but since my blog editor tells me I can edit my already posted blog topics, I shall add them up subsequently.

You dear reader may be wondering which category do I fall under. :-) Or why am I starting this blog?

Well my blog is, as wikipedia informs, is a “Personal Diary”. You may read it, if you stumble across it, I don’t have any qualms about it, but I will protect my identity. In fact I will not be informing any of my peers/friends/colleagues etc about it. If I do so, I compromise myself. No real names will be mentioned. I shall rave and rant too but I hope to do it not in a personal manner but in a generalized way so that you too can participate, feel a part of it, and shed some light on my ramblings. Since I do not want to be a part of the point two which I had mentioned earlier, this blog will not be very frequently updated. The main reason why this blog came into existence can never be told since it’s too personal. If that person someday comes across this blog he will understand the significance of both the blog and the name chosen for it. Just for the record this blog was intended to be started and the first entry was to be on 28^th Jan 2007.

Thank you for stopping by and making it up till this far. You are welcome to drop by again.