Flashback News Agency international #1 (beta version) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * -= F N A #65 =- Flashback News Agency First english version vol.2 no.47 - 9 December 1996 Number of subscribers: 13.098 (+711) Editor:Jan Axelsson (JA) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Content: ----------------- 1...........Editorial......................................Jan Axelsson..... 2...........Feedback.......................................Stric a.o........ 3...........This week's unmarked police cars...............MasterofDisaster. 4...........Metallica censored by MTV......................JA............... 5...........The police buys Audi...........................Sotnosen......... 6...........Scientology building under fire................Alex............. 7...........Telia's new prices.............................Nevyn............ 8...........Probation for forging grades...................Nevyn............ 9...........The B1FF-alphabet..............................mArXx............ 10..........Fighter jets for sale on the Internet..........Patrik........... 11..........Nazi-jews......................................mArXx............ 12..........Saudi Arabia censors This Perfect Day..........JA............... 13..........Ten years for porn flicks......................mArXx............. 14..........All foreign words are banned in Iran...........Anonymous........ 15..........Safer ID cards with new technique..............PF............... 16..........Ultima Thule gets their own Internet homepage..Odin............. 17..........Rosenbad's home page hacked....................JA............... 18..........Short article on Scientology...................Peach............ 19..........Santa - live on the Internet...................JA............... 20..........Hexor's home page stopped......................Hexor............ 21..........Internet - the new drug........................Dr.Jakel......... 22..........Homan - for Iranian homosexuals' rights........JA............... 23..........Telia's Nara newsletter cancelled..............o2o.............. 24..........Maxis victimized by hack.......................JA............... 25..........PS. Check this out.............................Zorro & Oyvind... Contributors: Alex, Dr.Jakel, Dz, Feliks D, mArXx, Master of Disaster, Nevyn, o2o, Odin, Patrik, Peach, PF, Stric, Sotnosen, TC of GummiBears, Zorro & Oyvind m.fl. [1]: Editorial =============================== To publish an E-mail magazine has become popular. For some time now, a large number of companies in the IT business have also been publishing different E-mail magazines. But of course they do not do it without a profit interest. So far, the business side of the magazines has mostly been PR, but now requests for finacial contributions and advertisments are surfacing. First out with an offer to publish ads is the magazine "UPPSNAPPAT", which is published by the publishinc company BOSS/Mestroms (http://www.boss.medstroms.se). They have 3,500 subscribers, and and ad (company name + short presentation + URL) in their E-publication costs 5000SEK for 4 occurances. That the interest in advertising on the Internet is great otherwise is hardly news. Today, InternetWorld (http://www.idg.se/iworld/) a list of the 10 most visited advertising agents on the WWW. The list is based on number of visitors per month, and the statistics are reported by the companies themselves. Torget: 1 650 000 Aftonbladet: 1 120 000 Passagen: 900 000 IDG: 255 000 Dagens Nyheter: 166 000 Svenska Dagbladet: 150 000 Goteborgsposten: 150 000 Affarsvarlden: 140 000 Everyday Webguide: 120 000 Z-TV: 80 000 However, there is no information available regarding the procedures for calculatin the number of hits. The most common way is not to just count the number of hits on the main page, but to add up all hits on all pages. When examining these statistics, one quickly notices that Flashback stands its ground among its "colleagues". The Flashback homepage (and then we only talking about the main page) has on average 120,000 visitors per month (about 4000 visitors/day), and to that we might add that some link pages (read: sex links) have more visitors than the main page. But then again, we are not an ad agency. The ads we have there are free of charge. BTW: 1996, the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet 48 million Kronor in Swedish financial press aid. In 1997, this is raised to 52 million. It can be interesting to know how our tax money is spent. Jan Axelsson [2]: Feedback =============================== Letter.1 [Re: hacker culture] - TC of GummiBears I read a letter from Affe & Nisse in FNA #63 and I have to make remark regarding the incredibly bad hacker ethics some people in Sweden have. A real hacker would never sacrifice 35 minutes to hassle other internet users who want to use Aftonbladet's chatserver. If he had a bad day, he might try it once to see if it worked. A real hacker seeks the challenge of gaining access to a system or information that is not really available, a battle between the system administrator and the hacker. I am personally not aspiring to be a hacker, but I think I know what inspires him to do what he does. It is quite an adrenaline rush when one sees the classic "#" prompt for the first time on a system that one is not supposed to have access to. The only time that a DoD (Denial of Service) attack can be justified is when one is penetrating certain firewalls, or when preventing "trusted hosts" from replying during spoofing. Another incident was when Art Computers server in Skovde was erased by a malicious "hacker" (Even if that is what he was called in FNA, I do not agree). The only reason to act similarly would be to erase traces of who commited the illicit entry, but with a little skill this can be done without having to ruin things for 500 users. The problem with today's hackers is that anybody can break in and crash systems, just by doing a search with AltaVista, for example. The information used to be more difficult to get access to for those who were not in the scene. Letter.2 [Re: Lansstyrelsen's hacked home page] - Stric I would just like to comment on what "Eagle" wrote in FNA #64 regarding the Lansstyrelse hack... It is me he is referring to with this "student at Umea University", that much I know because I am the only student at UmU who ever was involved in this. I was not the one who hacked the page... But that is not important... I was not the one who hacked the page... The admins here at UmU and at Lansstyrelsen know this. My involvement was that I looked at the page before and after it had been hacked. The person/persons who hacked the page does/doesn't attend Umu, that I know. A tip for next time you mail something to a newsletter which is distributed world wide.. Do not state something that you do not know to be true when it accuses someone or some university. The press, for example, does not care if you make a correction afterwards. By then, the damage is already done. Letter.3 [Re: smart cards are not so smart] - Dz Some comments regarding "Smart cards are not so smart" in FNA #64. Ross Anderson is rather a secrity theorist/activist, while the person who probably does the dirty work is "his associate", who in this case is none other then Markus Kuhn - widely know among satellite-tv-hackers. He was the one who wrote the first season-program (Season7) for decoding commercial videocrypt transmissions a couple of years ago, and he is probably the most famous member of the so called videocrypt-mailinglist. If anyone is interested in the entire report (published at a USENIX-workshop in November), it can be read at: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tamper.html Letter.4 [Smart Cards not so stupid after all] - Feliks D What has happened is that individual cards have been forced to reveal secret information. Even known Smart Card manufacturers admit this. The thing that nobody so far even theoretically has been able to account for, is how this information could be used to compromise the security of other cards, and thus the system as a whole. The Smart Card manufacturers are worried about how the cards are many times used carelessly. For example, in France they drag terminals out on restaurant tables, where the secret (?) PIN number is entered in public view! [3]: This weeks unmarked Police cars. ===================================== PLX 175, Volvo 740, Alingsas HJB 456, SAAB 900, Alingsas PTJ 693, Volvo 940, Bla, Alingsas (Bidragsgivare: Master of Disaster) [4]: Metallica censored by MTV =============================== At the MTV-awards on November 14th, Metallica was one of the bands on the stage. But will not appear in reruns of the concert. MTV europe has chosen to censor their performance because their cover of Anti-Nowhere Leagues's "So What?" contains obscene language. -Censorship of all kinds makes us damn angry, says Metallica's singer James Hatfield. Some of the words that MTV thought were too colorful for their viewers were: Fuck, pratt, piss, cunt, cock, scabs and suck. (From: Expressen nojesnyheter 961202 - http://www.expressen.se/fredag/online_nyheter/) [5]: The police buys Audis =============================== Now there are also Audis in blue-white "uniform". the police has had unmarked Audis in their inventory for a long time, and now they also have their first "uniformed" Audi. Kiruna police department was first in the country to do this when they bought an Audi A6 Savant, which manages 200+km/h, and painted it in the blue-white colors. (Bidragsgivare: Sotnosen / Kalla Trafik & Motor, Forsvarets MotorKlubb) [6]: Scientology building under fire ==================================== The Church of Scientology buildin on Gotagatan in Stockholm was fired at on two occasions on Sunday of last week. According to the police technician a firearm was used, but exactly what type it was is not known. There are no witnesses to events. (Contributor: Alex / Source: TT) [7]: Telia's new prices ========================= Telia is lowering their rates for fjarrsamtal (long distance) starting on Christmas Eve. In addition, Telia is lowering the monthly fee to 315 kr for households. The intention is that the fee will become identical all over the country, Telia writes. The cost for fjarrsamtal is lowered .15 kr per minute. But starting January 3, the connection fee for a call will be raised by .05 kr. (Contributor: Nevyn / Source: TT) [8]: Probation for forging grades ================================= Probtaion and 50 day fines That was the sentence given to the 22-year-old who forged his high school grades when he applied to business school in Stockholm. The 22-year-old raised all his grades to 5s (highest, on a scale 1-5), except in P.E. where he was content with a 4, and thereby managed to get accepted by the school. The scam was revealed after an anonymous tip that the 22 year old man from Norrkoping and a friend of his had applied with forged grades. The crime was treated as a forgery of official documents. (Contributor: Nevyn / Source: Norrkoping's newspapers) [9]: The B1FF alphabet =============================== We all have, at one time or another, come across a page that has text that looks quite unreadable. Most of us then continue browsing other pages and discard the page as a system bug, while others try to read it and eventually they succeed. It is the so called B1FF-alphabet. It is based on that letters that only look like the actual ones are used, that the words are spelled as they sound, mix caps and lowercase letters, and basically do everything to make the reader feel like his eyes are bleeding. I am including a list of the letters in B1FF. It is not complete, because everyone spells things differently and uses caps and lowercase letters for the same letters sometimes, but it can at least be seen as an introduction. A: 4 or @ K: < U: u (U) B: b (B) L: l V: v (V) C: c (C) M: m (M) X: ks or X D: d (D) N: n (N) Y: y (Y) E: 3 O: 0 Z: ZzZ (any number) F: pH P: p (P) ^E: *4 G: g or ss Q: ku ^ss: "4 H: # R: r (R) ÷: "o I: 1 or 33 S: 5 or $ or z LL: lL J: j (J) T: + or 7 EXAMPLE: pHl4ZzB4<< 5w3D1zcH #0m3 0pH UnD3rssr0unD = Flashback swedish home of underground (Contributor: mArXx) [10]: Fighter jets for sale on the Internet ========================================== The Israeli defensedepartment did not find the prank funny. Someone had used the defense minister's name to advertise the the sale of everything from military tents to tanks on the Internet. On a web page with an Israeli state seal, regular military surplus such as sleeping bags and uniforms were advertised, but also fighter jets, artillery, patrol boats and a wide assortment of weapons. (Contributor: Patrik / Source: AP) [11]: Nazi-Jews =============================== Thousands of soldiers and officers in the Nazi-Germany Wehrmacht played a dangerous game. They were Jewish. According to the English historian Bryan Riggs, no less than 1200 nazi-soldiers were of Jewish heritage. Among the 1200 were 2 field marshalls, 10 generals, 14 colonels and 30 majors. (Contributor: mArXx / Source: Expressen) [12]: Saudi Arabia censors This Perfect Day ========================================== It is not easy to release albums in Saudi Arabia. This Perfect Day knows this. Their latest album "Don't smile" was stopped and confiscated by customs authorities because songs like "In my bed" and "Jesus on my side" contain words and topics that are prohibited in Saudi Arabia. Now This Perfect Day must change the titles on the album before attempting a new release of "Don't Smile" in Saudi Arabia. (Taken from: Expressen's entertainment news 961129 - http://www.expressen.se/fredag/online_nyheter/) [13]: Ten years for a porn flick ================================ Three Vietnamese officers risk up to ten years in prison for arranging a porn film evening together with a professor in culture at Hanoi University. About 80 curious people attended the showing where American hard core porn movies were shown. The same curious people now have to spend some time behind bars together with the people who arranged the event. (Contributor: mArXx / Source: Cats) [14]: All foreign words are banned in Iran ============================================== All foreign words will be banned in Iran, is the parliament's ruling on a new law. Those companies that have foreign names of products with foreign names have to register them under new names in Farsi, the official language. If the Council of Guardians, the highest judicial instance, approve the law, the companies will have one month to comply. The council, which confirms that new laws are congruent with the teachings of Islam, failed to sign the law at an earlier time, without any justification. Hundreds of Iranian companies have foreign names. If that is bad, even worse is the situation with everyday words that also have to be replaced. For example, Farsi does not have any words for the borrowed "autobus" from French, and "sandwich", computer", "telephone" and hundreds of other English words. Last year, Iran prohibited possession of satellite dishes so that the inhabitants would not be able to watch foreign TV-shows. By doing this, the religious leaders are trying to curb the cultural invasion from the West. (Contributor wishes to remain anonymous / Source: DN 961205) [15]: Safer ID-cards with new technique ======================================= The postal service will soon begin selling a more secure ID-card. A laser beam engraves a black and white photo, signature and personal identification number in two levels. The new card is made out of polycarbonate plastic. The postal service has chosen a new manufacturer: Setec Card, rather than AB ID-Kort. They are counting on reaching about 60% of the ID-card market in Sweden. (Contributor: PF / Source: Computer Sweden) [16]: Ultima Thule have their own homepage on the Internet ========================================================== The notorious Swedish band Ultima Thule has gotten its own homepage on the Internet. The page was made by 3 band members, and can be found at: URL: http://www.ultimathule.se/ (Contributor: Odin) [17]: Rosenbad's homepage hacked this week ========================================== Rosenbad (http://www.sb.gov.se) got their homepage page hacked around 1 am on Saturday night. The page was hacked "American Style", i.e. no pseudonym or links were left behind. Many people are of the opinion that those things (links and pseudonyms) only are for those who are dying for attention. The message was short and simple: STOP LYING, GORAN PERSSON! A compy of the hacked homepage can be found at the following address: URL: http://www.flashback.se/hack/rosenbad/ [18]: Short article about the Scientologists ============================================ Right now there is a struggle going on between shady Scientologists and freedom loving Internet users. Defectors from the the Church of Scientology are revealing the sect's questionable wrok tactics on the Internet. They are also revealing the sect's holy scriptures, which only members who have spent millions on expensive courses in personal development can take part of. The internet threatens movements that are founded on fraud and secrecy. The exposed frauds are spread in mere seconds in the digital world. Two years ago, the Scientologists tried to censor an electronic conference by submitting an e-mail which automatically deleted messages that put Scientology in a bad light. In January 1995, the sect wanted a USA court to ban the entire discussion group. The word "Scientology" was supposedly copyright protected. Fortunately, this attempt was unsuccessful. However, they have been successful at getting the Finnish police to force the owner of a so-called anonymity server (where information is spread anonymously) to reveal the real address of a person who had distributed material about Scientology. That was a clear violation of the messenger protection. This past summer, websurfer Zenon Panoussis from Stockholm put the Scientology bible "The Fishmans Papers" on his home page. The leaders of the sect took their lawyers with them and went to Sweden, where they obtained a court order to confiscate Panoussis' hard drives and disks. Panoussi took this opportunity to give the court all the texts, thereby making them public documents. He also gave the bible to the parliament, along with a letter to the politicans. That made the scripture into a matter for the Swedish parliament, and consequently a public document. Now the Scientologists are taking turns in the place the text is kept to prevent the public from taking part of the scripture. They are doing everything they can to circumvent the 200 years of legislated public access to official documents. Texts have disappeared and been manipulated both on the level of the justice department, the courts and the parliament. In the Scientology magazine, the parliament is described as a conspirator and a link in a crime organiztion. The parallel is drawn to the spreading of business secrets. Imagine if someone stole the recipe for Coca Cola and spread it! The example is revealing: Scientology is a quasi-religious business organization. They are selling spiritual courses at outrageous prices. Defectors reveal how they have been brain washed. Nobody is allowed to question the leaders. Critics should be silenced. With the Internet, the foundation for this extreme and anti-democratic movement has finally been put into motion. (Contributor: Peach / taken from Aftonbladet - http://www.aftonbladet.se/) [19]: Santa Claus -- live on the Internet ========================================= The following information was distributed around the World this week: -- NORTH POLE - November 26, 1996 (MMG) - At a press conference today Santa Claus announced the launching of his new website at http://www.santa4kids.com/santacam/ featuring the newly developed SantaCam(tm). Santa declared, "So many children have had questions about what I do all year in preparation for my big journey on Christmas Eve I have decided to give them a glimpse of my daily life." Combining the technology of the SantaCam(tm) with the worldwide use of the Internet, Santa is now accessible to everyone all year round. Follow Santa around in his home and workshop as he and his elves prepare to deliver gifts to children all over the world on Christmas Eve. For the first time ever, Santa has opened up and is willing to share his private life to the public. To see Santa with your own eyes, visit him at http://www..santa4kids.com/santacam/. -- [20]: Hexor's homepage stopped ============================== On Wednesday of last week, Hexor's homepage was stopped. The computer club TSDF believed that the page could damage their relation to Umea University (which provides them with an Internet connection). The page only contained LINKS to: 1. bomb recipes, pyrochemistry, GHB, 2c-b and 2. accurate information about two officials (without judging, and without their permission). TSDF refers to its policy, which only prohibits pages that contain nude pictures and sex links. This is what it sounded like on the radio news: All information is not allowed on the Internet. A student at Umea University has shown pictures and personal information about local prosecutors and police persons on the Internet. He encourages everyone who has had problems with the authorities to contact him, and he also offered information that would help them in their dealings with the authorities. The student was today suspended from using the University's Internet homepages. The police says that the student has not commited any crime, but that the University thought that his actions were unethical and then decided to lock his homepages. (Contributor: Hexor) [21]: Internet: the new drug ============================ A 17-year old ran amok at a rehabilitaion center for alcoholics in Texas a while back. His body was shaking and he threw chairs and tables around. He was suffering from withdrawal, but not from heroin, cocaine or alcohol, but from the Internet. On the American west coast, a woman spent so much time in cyberspace that her husband filed for a divirce. At that time, the woman has neglected feeding her children and ha not taken them to adoctor when they were sick. It is the New York Times that has brought Internet addiction to people's attention inthe USA. Just a few years ago, internet abuse was unheard of. Now more and more psychologists are warning about the consequences for users who can not regulate their use of the Internet. (Contributor: Dr.Jakel / Source: Dagens Nyheter 961205) [22]: Homan - for homosexual Iranians' rights ============================================= The orgnization Homan (the organization for homosexual Iranians' rights) has for the first time since it was started in 1991 gone public. It happened in relation to the oragnization's annual meeting in Goteborg in late November. - We want to make ourselves heard, show that we exist, both for Iranians and Swedes. Many Iranians are afreiad to contact us. They are afraid of informants and that that their families will shun them, says Nader, one of the organization's members. One gola of the organization is to make Swedish authorities understand the sistuation of homsexuals in Iran. Today, a number of refugees from Iran are risking being sent back to Iran. Homan was founded in Sweden and today has members from all over the world. (Taken from: QX - Dec '96 / Text: Mathias Pernheim) [23]: Telia's Nara Newsletter has been cancelled ================================================ This fall, we informed you about Telia's internal fax magazine which was being sent to Telia's executives. We can now tell you that the newsletter was cancelled after FNA's publicity of the matter. For the hackers who have root access at Telia, we would like to say that there is a substantial amount of interesting information at: http://internwww.telia.se/. There you can read about the reasons for the cancellation of the newsleter and also that they plan to resurrect is when security is better. While waiting for the next issus, we have to be content with the ones that were published. Rumor has it that ther are plans to distribute all issues to the public on the Internet. In #36 they quote an article from FNA. With the heading "Who is prowling in the store?", they publish Croms contribution: "How to get a free 020-Internet access from Telia". Telia's advice was: keep your eyes and ears open! There's always someone who will take the article seriously. (Contributor: o2o) [24]: Maxis victimized by hack =============================== The CD-ROM manufacturer Maxis Inc. has been forced to recall the new game SimCopter, hr reason being that the game has been hacked by one of their own programmers. Only after Maxis had shipped 50,000 copies of the game did SimCity-daddy himself, Will Wright, discover the damage. The programmer, Jacques Servin, had undressed SimCopter's men and reshaped them to beach guys with broad shoulders and tight shorts. As if that was not enough, Severin hacked an instruction which said: if one encounters one of the beach guys, they should kiss him -- he will kiss you back. The result is a loud kissing sound, another one of Severin's pranks. Severin, who now has lost his job, says that he did the hack because the person who was going to use his animation utility was agressivley heterosexual and created bimbos with large breasts and kissing mouths. Severin thought the guy went to far, so he went to action. In addition to the boybimbos that are already programmed into SimCopter today, more an more will be born as time goes by. Friday the 13th and Severin's birthday are two dates on which new births are expected. (From: Torgets IT-news 961209 - http://www.torget/se/) [25]: PS. Check out =============================== ZeaHawks: http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/3173/index2.html (Warez site. Puts up the games of the week etc.) Nasty and otherwise socially unacceptable pictures: http://www.intercom.net/user/Virtuanna/xxx.html (Worst on the net right now?) Novell Netware Hacking FAQ: http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~p7003nb/homepage/hack2.html (For those who want to hack Novell) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Do you have any interesting news or have you read any interesting articles? Please mail them to: fna@flashback.se. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ F L A S H B A C K N E W S A G E N C Y ( F N A ) / F L A S H B A C K : email: fna@flashback.se / flashback@flashback.se www: http://www.flashback.se irc: #flashback (EFNet - Europe) ftp: ftp.flashback.se gopher: gopher://gopher.flashback.se + + + FNA subscription (flashback news agency): free (!!!) Flashback subscription - Sweden (3 issues): 150kr (at cost). Support subscription - (3 issues): 200kr. Flashback subscription - Nordic countries (3 issues): 200kr. Flashback subscription - Worldwide (3 issues): 225kr. postgiro: 39 64 28-5. bankgiro: 5355-6866 mailing address: flashback, box 676, 114 79 Stockholm, Sweden +++ Terminate your subscription with the message: "unsubscribe FNA". Start your subscribtion with: "subscribe FNA". (c) NO COPYRIGHT / NO RIGHTS RESERVED - FLASHBACK MAGAZINE / 1996 ==========E==N==D=====F==I==L==E=====================================