Hier een aantal foto’s

En enkele filmpjes (sorry voor lage kwaliteit)!

Meysam en Anna dansen op Zij Gelooft in Mij van André Hazes:

De SYTYCD dansers geven alles op Birdy’s Skinny Love:

En tenslotte Anna en Meysam nogmaals, dit keer op Lana Del Rey’s video games:

As part of this significant event, Mark Zuckerberg came up with an interesting letter to potential shareholders. According to Zuckerberg, Facebook “was built to accomplish a social mission” and said the company was inspired by technologies such as the printing press and television, which “make the world more open and connected”. He also stressed that “we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”

Mashable says that  “this makes Facebook sound like it’s set out to deliver presents and free education to underprivileged children” and that it “isn’t the whole picture — Facebook brought in $1 billion in profits last year”. Truth be told, there is some hypocrisy there. It’s rightly put into perspective and therefore a very valid critic. Still, it might be reassuring investors to see Facebook is pursuing a mission. How can a company be profitable otherwise?

So Zuckerberg’s letter seems to suggest that Facebook wasn’t originally built to be a company, but to pursue a social mission.

Now the thing is, Nicholas Carr has a post on that letter – I am an avid reader of his blog. I have always looked up to Carr in fact, because he wrote the famous Harvard Business Review article “IT doesn’t matter” in which he states that the strategic importance of information technology in business has diminished and that it has become a commodity. That generated a lot of buzz in the tech world. In later years and more recently, Carr has been a notorious critic of technological utopianism and in particular the populist claims made for online social production.

So I have been following Carr closely as a pundit, but when I read his latest Saint Zuck I was completely stunned. Apparently he was able to get his hands on some IM transcripts in which the 19-year-old Zuckerberg decided to build Facebook. He reveals that Facebook was not Zuckerberg’s main priority at the time: an IM conversation between Mark Zuckerberg and a confidant —about who will foot legal bills in the event that Facebook were ever to be sued – points that out. And from the conversation Zuckerberg had with his high school friend named Adam D’Angelo, he suggests that Zuckerberg is an utter greedy dick: how he naturally obsesses about ways to “fuck over” his competitors, how he fantasizes to pour investors’ money into “advertising and stuff,” and “win.”

Carr just completely discredits Mark Zuckerberg here. I mean seriously, has Zuckerberg done anything evil, gruesome or unethical? Did he harm you, Carr, to actually make a social networking site succeed? It was most likely a team of public relations professionals anyway who wrote the letter. Zuckerberg doesn’t want to pretend that he’s an altruist, for the record. And I really don’t care that these instant messages were preserved because of a lawsuit or two from the Winklevii.

This is just playing dirty, low-sense and scanty BS in my opinion. Who cares really?

I think our old-media-dog just lost some credibility, bashing the person of Mark Zuckerberg like that.

Very exclusive news Carr. You really got your momentum.

You know what’s cheap in the 21st century? Compute time. You know what’s expensive? Human judgment. And they’re not interchangeable. Humans are good at understanding things, computers are good at counting things, but humans suck at counting and computers suck at understanding.  – Cory Doctorow, Pester Power

This blog is becoming increasingly an asylum for victims of acts of social engineering. The rant on the Huurwoningen scam has already  over 100 comments and the Facebook trickery post also generates some fair amount of traffic. The thing that bothers me the most, is that in the huurwoningen case, Song Chine and others keeps on doing what they are good at: manipulating and deceiving people in order to scam them. They send the same nice, plausible and “innocent” e-mails to innocent people in an attempt to persuade them to comply with their request. But of course, the statements they make are completely false. And the sad thing is that it seems like there doesn’t seem to be law enforcement on these malevolent acts. There is no evidence that the charlatans are punished and they don’t seem to face the felony charges they deserve. What is also striking me is that there is no online haven or portal where victims can report such incidents of online deception, trickery and bogus calls. Another big issue with the phenomenon of social engineering, is that there is very little known about the exact length and breadth of its problem space. In a world built on digital information and global connectivity, that is dangerous. There’s also no mechanism that triggers the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to step in. I think there’s still a long way to go. The law is currently not transparent and it is not clear what is covered and what not. Which institution should take ownership of what? The cybercops? Do service providers need to be made accountable for informing the cybercops of social engineering felonies? I don’t have an answer for that matter, but what I do know is that there’s an evolution where social engineering techniques are increasingly being applied for the purpose of unauthorized system access, information gathering and fraud. In the first place, I believe people should be educated about social engineering techniques and its consequences.  So in an effort towards creating more awareness, I am writing this piece.

Let me just step back, and start with the security of Information Systems. My alma mater colleague Peter De Bruyn wrote an excellent article on Social Engineering in Informatie and to a certain extent I will base myself upon his writings. He says that when we talk about the security of Informations Systems, usually only the technical side is looked at. Firewalls, encryption and RAID are good examples of that. However, these techniques are not always effective to protect Information Systems under all circumstances. There are also human-related risks to Information Systems. That’s where social engineering comes in. Indeed, attacks that exploit a person’s gullibility can also create a tremendous amount of damage. And such social engineering attacks are very hard to detect. Because things aren’t always what they seem. A social engineer will aim to catch us unaware. He will leverage his psychological power to move the victim into an unauthorized act.

It turns out there’s not a single and unanimous definition of Social engineering. The Wikipedia definition seems to be a good one though. It says that Social Engineering is a collection of techniques used to manipulate people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. The thing is that almost everyone is vulnerable to Social Engineering attacks and maybe might even commit such acts. I am going to make a bold statement here: humans are  stupid. Social Engineers abuse the very fundamental human psychological properties and their decision making attributes (cognitive biases): their willingness to help others, their greed, their naivety, their willingness to perform, their fears,  their usage of  “mental shortcuts” and their initial goodwill and trustworthiness towards others.  Secondly, people might commit such crimes because humans lie to each other. Under certain circumstances, people might do anything (e.g., cyber-stalking, intimidate others) to obtain certain information that is important to them. On a side-note, I remember a mathematics teacher in high school once told me that any human being is capable of killing someone – just think of what happened during the Holocaust.  There’s a vast number of social engineering methods, and for your information, these are the most popular ones: pretexting, diversion theft, phishing, tailgating, baiting and quid pro quo. It’s not my intention to explain them in detail here though.

So how does a typical social engineering attack looks like? Traditional computer attacks focus on the technical weaknesses in hardware and software.  Social Engineering attacks however focus on human weaknesses. Some attacks though can have a mixed character and will be used to exploit technical weaknesses, as Peter points out. Good examples are trojan horses and (spear) phishing will offer you a “useful” application or all kinds of “vital” information is requested to better “protect” a target.  Ultrasurf is for instance used to circumvent Internet censorship, but it’s still a black box. You cannot know what the code does, unless you reverse engineer it. Luckily,  antivirus programs report it contains spyware and several trojan horses (which may actually enable government surveillance). Peter identifies four typical phases in a social engineering attack. It is a reoccurring pattern. In the first phase, the social engineer will try to collect personal information about the victim. Like names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and so on. Subsequently, the social engineer will try to build a trust relationship with the victim. He will use the information he gathered earlier on to take away any suspicion by indicating his familiarity (e.g., name-drop) to the potential victim’s environment.  The third face consists of gathering more specific information, like IT infrastructure and architectures, server and application names, usernames and passwords. In order to get this detailed valuable information,  psychological and emotional pressure means will be used. And finally, the attacker will exploit this information to get unauthorized access to the systems as to change, delete or copy data and basically use it to his/her own benefit.

The question that then arises is how can we combat the social engineering phenomenon? First and foremost, there will always be a risk of a successful attack based on social engineering. Humans expose inherent weaknesses. Computers do too, because they cannot interpret data carefully enough (but that’s another interesting and philosophical discussion). I think that recognizing the above described pattern could provide the impetus to protect oneself to the attacks, however, organizations and the public services should also take measures to combat this evilness.  Peter distinguishes three types of measures that can be taken. The first measure is to formulate clear and concrete policies about physical access to systems and list the type of activities and actions that employees are (dis) allowed to do when providing certain information. One can classify this information by separating sensitive information, private information, internal information and public information. Every policy should also contain clear instructions about identity verification (e.g., how to make correctly use of passwords). It is also imperative that personnel is encouraged to report suspicious acts to a central repository so that it can be centrally monitored. This will help security officers to step in and arrange for a forensic examination. A second measure is raising the security awareness by training and education. In our jobs, people need to be aware in their day-to-day work about what to do to assure the security of the information they handle. Employees should know why they need to respect the policies and what happens if they don’t. In corporate speak: policies should be executed like if they were a basic hygiene factor. Social engineering penetration tests can also contribute to raise security awareness by showing the vulnerabilities in the policies. Finally, some authors suggest taking technical measures too, to protect oneself from social engineering attacks. Think changing passwords frequently, strong authentication, time-based tokens or biometric identity checks.  By the way, a big research topic nowadays deals with how to model and analyze the socio-technical aspects of modern security systems and on how to protect such systems from socio-technical threats and attacks. This requires different communities of researchers (experts in computer security and in cognitive, social, and behavioral sciences) to sit together, in order to identify weaknesses potentially emerging from poor usability designs and policies, from social engineering, and from deficiencies hidden in flawed interfaces and implementations.

When the exact size of the social engineering problem is unknown, it is also hard to mine the phenomenon. So I am eagerly awaiting  an online mass initiative to sprout, which will allow us to combat this never-ending conflict. There’s definitely room for improvement in the collaboration between citizen and government, employee and organization and the enforcement of law and order.  What we do know is that everyone can become a victim of social engineering, and that such techniques are being applied by both in- and outsiders. And I am going to end again with a bold and sardonic statement: no matter how much we care, no matter how well aware we are: we will not and cannot desist and cease social engineering crimes. Social engineers are shrewd, and maybe sometimes we can outsmart them. But that’s also where it ends. Securing ourselves against such attacks is a very complex and never ending process.

Update 1: Here some pointers. In Belgium, users can report Internet crimes on eCops.be. You needn’t worry about who is qualified for what, eCops makes sure that your report is being investigated by the appropriate service. In The Netherlands, recently the NCSC started operating. NCSC cooperates in enhancing the defensibility of the Dutch society in the digital domain. Their goal is to realize a safe, open and stable information society by sharing knowledge, offering insight and also offering a proper action perspective.

1. The American. With George Clooney: thoughtful story, but little plot. Loved the cinematography. You immediately get thrown into the story (an assassination). No bullshit. We no speak Americano.
2. Dear John – from the director of  The Notebook. Special forces soldier falls in love with a beautiful young lady, but decides to go on a military mission. A year later, the sickness of his father forces him to come back home. Kind of liked the drama twist. Made my girlfriend’s face ugly
3. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – exaggerated. Disney production. Predictable.
4. The Freebie – one long dreaded dialogue. Loved the concept, but couldn’t hold the attention for longer than 30 minutes.
5. Pineapple Express – Poor stoner footage.
6. The Hours – drama, lovely music and Julianne Moore!
7. A Single Man – crazy mad gay professor and Julianne Moore.
8. From Paris with love – John Travolta.
9. Percy Jackson & the Olympians The Lightning Thief – Humor. “Uglyano”. Greek Gods. Surrealistic potterian-like movie.
10. Up – Fantastic. Adventure. Imagination. Kind of movie that could make a kid cry.
11. How to train your dragon
12. Kind of a funny story
13. The Hurt Locker – won an oscar!
14. Date Night – a bit absurd, but with Mila Kunis!
15. Alvin and the chipmunks – Justin Long‘s voice is Alvin
16. Black Swan – One of the best movies of the year. Nathalie Portman does some excellent acting! And Mila Kunis of course too.
17. The Day the earth stood still – Plainly boring.
18. He’s just not that into you – amazing cast: Justin Long, Drew Barry Moore, Ben Afleck, Scarlett Johansson.
19. The King’s Speech – Same guy from A Single Man (Colin Firth), but he stammers now.
20. Precious – scrupulously cruel
21. The Kids are all right
22. Norwegian Wood – Alternative, rather obsurce flick, directed by a Vietnamese. Highly recommended.
23. Magnolia – That movie with Tom Cruise where out of the blue frogs fall from the sky.
24. Surrogates – Sci-Fi with Bruces Willis.
25. Nowhere boy – documentary about John Lennon‘s life.
26. Love Actually
27. Valentine’s Day
28. The Mechanic – Action. Hit man.
29. TRON – Legacy: very disappointing. I was kind of sleepy while watching. Could have been called “revolutionary” in the 80s though.
30. Castle in the sky – Anime. Crazy air pirates!
31. I am number four – Absurd. Aliens and beaches?
32. Quills – Marquis De Sade! Great.
33. Season of the Witch – Nicolas Cage again. Guy wants to cash. Cheap.
34. Just Go With It
35. Unknown
36. Inside Job – Recommended documentary about the economic meltdown. Strauss Khan is featured in this movie, before the incident.
37. Love and other Drugs – Anna Hathaway!
38. The Adjustment Bureau – Based on a Philip K. Dick. book.  Not too bad.  A bit silly.
39. Friends with Benefits – Milan Kunis is featured here too. She looks so innocent and this movie really shows that she is an insanely good actress. Justin Timberlake as good as ever.
40. Keith – Great acting. Unusual and special movie. A bit depressing about a kid who is about to die. Very emotional picture. Great story line.
41. The Debt – Thriller. Mossad Soldiers. Great storyline. Unpredictable. Vogel. Nazis. Revolves around the idea of living with a lie for 30 years and justice.

So which movies did you see?

While staying in Ho Chi Minh, I was very lucky because my girlfriend took me out to 2 clubs with live music. Just what I like. I have been too many gigs already in the past while I was kind of active in the punk and hardcore scene. In my hometown, we usually would head to den drempel, Hof ter Loo or Trix. But these are gigs with an entrance fee. And in the loud metal/punk genre. And seriously, I can’t really come up with any place in Antwerp that is a cozy small music club with cover bands/artists. There will always almost be an obliged entrance fee. You might find “live music” it in a bar though, maybe in something like Irish pub Kelly’s.

Oh boy, what had I been missing! In Ho Chi Minh City, there are lots of opportunities to go enjoy an adorable night out with live music or any other form of entertainment basically. In the music clubs there,  you just buy a few drinks (marked up of course, but still reasonably priced) and that makes it very affordable in my opinion. The bartender and band get what they deserve, and you can enjoy live music. A win-win situation.

The first club that we went to is called Acoustic. Probably the best known venue there. Vietnam’s leading musicians flock to Acoustic for cameo cover versions. It was very lividly. The crowd was going crazy with many of the songs, singing along the lines. There was a good variety of songs, genres and singers.

Another great place is called Yoko. It was Tet, so the venue was packed just like in Acoustic. But I attended during Tet, so that might explain. Yoko’s venue is very cozy (small stage, comfy chairs and revolving art-works) and the crowd that gathers here is comparable to Acoustic’s: locals, holiday makers and expats. The music is more geared towards indie rock. The band performing that night was called Microwave (resident band apparently). They were covering songs that night that went from the likes of Lady Gaga to Abba to Guns’n Roses to end with Linkin Park. Great singer with an exquisite, highly pitched voice. And a very amusing band.

Below a Vietnamese song of theirs called Chỉ là giấc mơ (it’s only a dream).

This post talks about my morning in Cloud Lake, Vung Tau.

A vessel took us from Saigon to Vung Tau. Before boarding I of course had to take a picture first with Ho Chi Minh‘s tallest skyscraper, the Bitexco Financial Tower.

Upon arriving, I already saw a lot of sea and vessels (not surprising of course).

The plan was to head to Cloud Lake. So we took the cable car (my first one in Vietnam). It was an enjoyable ride with some stunning views.

It is difficult to categorize Cloud Lake because it has a bit of everything but not much of anything. It is not a theme park because there are only a few rides. There is also something that resembles a zoo or a natural reserve. We started off with a breakfast. I went with an omelet sunny side up. And I tried the first ever fresh and delicious yoghurt mango juicy shake.

The rest of the morning we spent in Cloud Lake. Below is a beautiful statue of Ho Chi Minh himself.

On Cloud Lake, there was the first Buddha for me to see.

There were some special spiritual statues surrounding the pagoda too.

And I got my first chance on Cloud Lake to enter a Pagoda barefoot.

We also took a short rail ride and basically just enjoyed the stunning views and nature. It was very quiet and peaceful. That basically captures my morning in Vung Tau…

This is the first time a foreigner visits the house, and I am the guest. He offers me a Tiger beer, which I of course do not reject. I tell him that I tried Saigon beer and the stronger 333 beer before. And that I don’t like the latter. But it turns out both are manufactured in the same factory. Saigon is for bottles, 333 for cans. I feel a bit embarrassed. He wonders how long I stay in Vietnam and how the food is and the people and everything. I explain him that so much is different and that I like the food. But people are the same everywhere. Many of whom I met already are good, honest and genuine but there are also very cunning, mean and corrupt people.   He seems to agree.

In the house I see the typical Buddhist inspired and Tet-decorated (incenses, coconut) altar and two pictures of his deceased parents. But there are more photos hanging, and I ask him about it. He explains he used to be a photographer before for weddings, baby showers and family pictures and so on. They look simple, but I like them. The perfect setting. Then his wife, as hospitable as him and who doesn’t speak English, asks me if I want some food. Noodles or so. The all-day eating event already made me full, so fruit will do, I reply. And I can’t help but notice his wife is some 5 inches larger than him. A fruit plate is served with fresh mangoes, mandarins and apples. We delve into the local foods of my country and he thinks there are a lot of grapes. But I confirm him that the vineyards are mostly in southern European countries France, Italy and Spain. And he knows about cherries too. And the conversation comes back to beers. Fruity beers.

Then it’s time for me to sing a karaoke song. Abba is still very big here, so I choose Happy New Year. I can’t sing really, and I don’t know the text. But I can read the subtitles, so that’s okay and we had a lot of fun. Some more beer, and I ask him some more personal stuff. His two daughters both go to school. One is four, still in kindergarten and very thin. The other one is eight years old, in elementary school and too fat. He says he is worried about that. Because he wouldn’t want to marry a girl that is too thin or too fat. It makes me laugh because he said it in all seriousness.

The man also talks about the Japanese classes he is taking. How he plans to work in Japan next year if he succeeds. I wish him all the best of luck. The conversation goes on for a bit longer.

Mum and dad are factory workers, and they seem to be doing a great job. I can’t help but notice how self-conscious, aware and good these people are. We talk about the loud karaoke music. The volume indeed is very high and I am sure surrounding neighbors hear it — so did we after all. Such a situation wouldn’t be appropriate in my country and out of discussion basically. Post 10PM, people might call up the police. He knows that. In Vietnam however, every neighbor really is a friend.

It is getting around 11h30 PM and time for the children to go to bed. I am getting a little bit emotional too and decide to call it a day too. What a wonderful and lovely family.

A story that touched me a lot. I can’t help but think how easy my life is. This man had to escape his country under devastating circumstances. He had almost no other choice, but made the right decision and it changed his life. Now we have opportunities to go abroad. But what if there is no way out, and you decide to burn yourself in flames? What does a man make a suicide bomber?

This exhibition is “obviously” all about optical illusions, Trompe l’Oeil and Trick of the eye style, hinting at the Vietnamese French history too in a way. Most paintings are of Korean origine, and I also spotted some European ones. I would definitely recommend this extravagant happening if you are in Saigon around now. If not, check it out later this year in Hanoi for example.

Not so much and here’s why.

Lunar New Year is the time when the Vietnamese people give a lick of paint to their houses and decorate the house with a mandarin tree. Being together with a Vietnamese local, today I had the chance to participate in a traditional Vietnamese old/new year’s ceremony. This is basically the start of the Lunar New Year — the Black Dragon is 2012′s theme. Let me first set the record straight. It is not a religion thing. Every family does it. It is more about the Buddhist tradition.

Here’s how I experienced it.

On the table, there was a nice yellow flower. You don’t see much different colored flowers for celebrations by the way, like what we are used to in Europe. As for the food, there will be rice (obviously), a chicken, soup, pork liver, some pork sausages, salad and rather spicy Korean kim chi. And rice wine. Finally, Banh Chung. Banh Chung is some sort of cake comprised of pork and rice and layered with rice again. They cover it in some green leaves. Quite special. It’s different, but tasty enough.

Initially and before the actual food festivity can start, there will be three bowls of rice and three small cups of rice wine. This is to worship the Gods. Then the incense will be lighted. Only when the incense is fully burned, one can commence to eat. This was a bit striking to me.

Another ritual is that the people will keep papers. These papers will then be burnt. I was kind of surprised to see burn the beautiful colorful papers. Also, fake money (including mock dollars) will be burnt outside the house. By giving this to the Gods, they will take good care of the dead people.

I am kind of lucky to be here, close to a local that protects me as it isn’t always friendliness and kindness around here. There are also corrupt and mean people of course and you need to be constantly alert everywhere in the public.

But I am in good hands, with a good and warm family.

Anyways, I am pretty much excited for my last week here. It’s Tet! Couldn’t be a better time to come here too. It is the perfect weather. No rainy season, just sun all day. What else can one wish for…

And tonight there will be fireworks!