TR EMERITUS

By Stephen Chen from South China Morning Post They are young, gifted and hack - and they want you to know they had nothing to do with the cyber-attacks that prompted Google to announce it was prepared to pull out of China. They admit some of their brethren waged electronic warfare last week against the Iranian Cyber Army but say members act based on a sense of honour, not instructions from Beijing. The Honker Union of China was formed after a group of computer hackers caused a stir in 2001 when they brought down thousands of US websites in response to the collision of a US spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea. Since then, the group has developed into a highly organised network of more than 12,000 individuals who are at the cutting edge of the darkest arts of the information age. Despite its size and influence, the group is shrouded in mystery. But in a rare interview, days after Google's declaration last week, a core member of the union offered a rare glimpse into the world of mainland hackers. He and his colleagues were not involved in the attacks on Google - which the US Web search giant says were aimed at accessing the e-mail accounts of Chinese dissidents worldwide - said "Lyon", who is based in central China and describes himself as a senior hacker. "We have imposed very strict ethical principles on our members. This practice is not allowed, because it is immoral," he said. Google claimed mainland hackers backed by government agencies attacked the private accounts of users of its e-mail service, Gmail, via a computer based in Taiwan, but Lyon challenges this assertion. "We have established close and friendly contact with hacker organisations around the world, including those in the United States. There is no real national boundary in cyberspace. Anyone can launch an attack from anywhere via any route. You can't blame a huge country like China for an infiltration attempt," he said. Lyon says the group represents "a new generation of hackers" - many of them highly paid information-technology professionals. They take pride in their "code of chivalry", under which they inform webmasters of the loopholes they have found after hacking into their systems. Lyon is one of the Honker Union's seven core members. He won't go into too much detail, but he does sketch the profiles of four of his colleagues. Yexin is a senior information-technology engineer who specialises in router security. opencTM is a developer of embedded applications. Chen13 is an internet security engineer. Xiaochu, a 15-year old high-school student, is widely recognised in hacker circles for his skills. He won't say anything about the other two core members. All the names are pseudonyms, he adds. Unlike earlier generations of Chinese hackers who often had no job, Honkers like Lyon occupy senior positions in security for IT companies and have plenty of money. The money allows them to fund their own operations, he says, and they have no relationship with the mainland authorities. Google says it no longer wants its Chinese-language mainland search engine, google.cn, to be bound by the government's censorship rules and that, if the government can't agree to that, it is prepared to shut the service down. It has already stopped filtering some search requests. But censorship is a subject Lyon will not be drawn on. Like other hackers, who generally avoid upsetting the government, he distances the Honker Union from politics. The union has helped some small government websites patch security loopholes, he says, but has never worked under a government contract or been asked to infiltrate another country's computers. "Real Honkers are artists. We don't steal anything, we don't spy on anyone," he says. He says some members of the group were involved in the recent cyber dust-up with Iranian hackers, but insists none of the core members were involved. The so-called Iranian Cyber Army hijacked the DNS server of Chinese search engine Baidu in the United States on Tuesday. Chinese hackers retaliated, putting national flags and patriotic slogans on some Iranian government websites. Lyon does, though, admit that the Honker Union does not have absolute control over all its members, and has no way to discipline them beyond moral suasion. "As soon as we found out some of our members were involved, we immediately released an emergency notice prohibiting any further attacks," he said. "Iran and China are friends. Cyberspace is very complicated. It is not easy to tell who is really behind the attack." Twenty years ago, computers were a luxury for the privileged few, but today the mainland boasts 384 million internet users and its hackers are known the world over. Many steal information and business secrets for profit. Some big groups have their websites and one specialises in hacking into systems to delete negative internet postings. But such intrusive and damaging hack attacks are anathema to the Honker Union, for whose members attacks on individuals such as rights activists are a non-starter, according to Lyon. The name Honker literally translates as "red visitor", or hong ke, a nationalist play on the Chinese word for hacker, hei ke, meaning "dark visitor". It is led by the Red Hacker Security Team, which runs a website that provides internet security news, educational materials, free hacking software and source codes, plus a forum only open to members. "Compared with Western countries, China's internet infrastructure has more loopholes. We hope to use our experience, knowledge and skill to create a pool of talent. Together we will build a more secure cyberspace, in which citizens and small businesses can live happily," Lyon says. "What we do is simple. We find a website and hack it. We usually pick small or medium-sized sites because they have the least defence. "Once we succeed, we review each step of the attack procedure. Then we will think about what can be done to defend against it. In the end we will put all the information into a report and click `send' to the webmaster. "We don't do it for money. We haven't made a cent from the people we help. Our satisfaction, and motivation, comes from the many long and sincere thank-you letters from webmasters of smaller websites." - SCMP  Read More →

Written by Our Correspondent Singapore is ranked the 70th best place in the world to live in based on the Quality of Life index computed yearly by Ireland-based magazine "International Living". (read report here) The index is produced based on the following nine categories: cost of living, culture and leisure, economy, environment, freedom, health, infrastructure, safety and risk and climate. Each country in each category is graded on a curve and it is scored relative to every other country. The scores run 0 to 100 for each category. This means the country that gets 0 is the worst in that category, and the country that gets 100 is the best. The data is collated from official government sources, the World Health Organization, The Economist, and many other journals, tables, and records. Below is Singapore's scores for each category: While Singapore scores high on risk and safety, health and infrastructure, it scores poorly in environment and freedom, bringing down its final score to a mediocre 61. Environment and Freedom each contributed 10 per cent to the countries' overall score: Environment (10%). To figure a country’s score in this category, we look at population density per square kilometer, population growth rate, greenhouse emissions per capita, and the percentage of total land that is protected. Freedom (10%). Freedom House’s survey is the main source for these scores, with an emphasis on a citizen’s political rights and civil liberties. In contrast, Romania which was in the spotlight recently in Singapore over the double hit-and-run road traffic accident involving a Romanian diplomat Dr Silviu Ionescu was ranked 53th, 17 positions ahead of Singapore: The 5 most desirable places to live in the world are France, Australia, Switzerland, Germany and New Zealand. Singapore is ranked below Japan, South Korea and Taiwan among Asian countries. Singapore's leaders have always boasted of their accomplishment of transforming Singapore from third to first world country within a few decades, but if Singapore is really a first world country, why is it ranked among third world countries in terms of quality of life? It is highly unlikely that this damning report will be published by the Singapore media. Neither will anybody from the ruling party respond to it. They will probably dismiss it as quite "dissociated from reality" to borrow the words of Law Minister K Shanmugam. But International Living is read widely by Europeans and Americans and they may have a poor perception of Singapore based on the report. If Singapore really wishes to attract first class talents around the world and not just uneducated peasants from China or India, it needs to improve on the two categories of environment and freedom where it performed particularly badly. A world class healthcare, infrastructure and economy is not everything that people look for in life. They also yearn for civil and political liberties for them to play a meaningful role in society. Singapore has a first world economy ruled by a petty third world dictatorship. We cannot claim our rightful place as a developed country in the world so long our archaic, oppressive and obsolete political system remains in place to perpetuate the rule of a particular group of self-serving, power-hungry elites with little participation in nation-building from the rest of the people.  Read More →

By Lawrence Pek Clearly, there has been a lot of unhappiness on the grounds with the huge influx of foreigners into Singapore in the last 18 to 24 months, even though PM Lee has addressed this issue (well, sort of), I would like to dwell further with a deeper analysis of certain repercussions of these misguided policies. Value Added – Currently, clearly we have many foreigners in the service sectors, from 7-11 to waitresses to masseurs. The quality of Foreigners is both unclear and not scrutinized. Are they doing work that Singaporeans cannot do (special skills, experience or relationships) – or just competition with locals for local jobs (hawker centre, petrol kiosks and 7-11). Cheap vs. Cheaper - Even though it is true that foreigners are willing to accept cheaper salaries, please consider 2 things in the long run: 1.     Will they continue to accept the same low wages in 3 to 5 years? They will not, for 2 simple reasons - if they 30% cheaper than the local Singaporeans now, they will want to price themselves 5 to 10% cheaper than a local Singaporeans, these foreigners are not stupid, they want to be “cheaper” and not simply just “cheap” 2.     What will the government do about the high unemployment rate for the local that was displaced? e.g. If you bring in a cheaper 25 years old PRC girl to work in 7-11 to replace a 35 year old Singaporean woman (or man) – then what will he or she do, once she or he is replaced? Can that local find a higher valued job (higher salary with higher function) – Isn’t it clear that MOM just created a problem by doing this?   Structural Unemployment: Please allow me to use this to clarify pt 2, this comes about rarely, but it is a bitch to handle for any Minister of Manpower. Simply, there is a job mismatch – there are plenty of job vacancies to go about, but the quality of the people simply cannot perform what these jobs require…the market has changed and companies now require skills and knowledge workers in very specific or niche or high (high is not niche) areas. Then there is a clear and definite for that company to import foreign talent in order to perform the tasks at hand. But locally, MOM and MOE need to look at re-training and re-educating the local manpower to perform these task. Why? The reason is one of valued added and sustainability. If MOM and MOE can realize that there are no short cuts to structural unemployment, then they need to bite the bullet to retrain locals, because the locals stays and with a higher skilled workforce, Singapore as an economy will be more cutting edge and more competitive.   What happens when the Music Stops? With 36% foreigners now in Singapore, regardless of whether they are PRs or even New Citizens – will they be there when the going gets tough in Singapore or will they leave for their homeland (China, India, Vietnam…). Singapore is NOT HOME, they WILL LEAVE and then WHAT DO WE DO? Who will fill the void and what will happen to our economy? There is a further perspective, if you have a small group of 100 and 10 leave, the 90 people should be able to cover and manage, but if you have a group of 10,000 and 1,000 leaves (same 10%), the balance 9,000 cannot and will not want to cover and manage the gap.   The Brain Drain issue This is not a new phenomenon; there are many Singaporeans (even though they keep their passports) who will never come back here. Artists, Musicians, Scientists and lastly, people like myself, self-made business men. I have so many friends now in US, Europe and China now, they simply will not come back anymore; their reply is very simple, Singapore no longer provides the environment for their (or their kids) development. Their value in these foreign countries is higher than in Singapore. They already feel there is no more reason, no more space for them to come back anymore. Given the new demographics in their homeland now, I doubt if any of them are inclined to ever come back.   Conclusion In summary, the key message that I would like to convey is that of Sustainability – Yes, it is true that the local bred and born has 2 main issues, which is driving the influx of foreigners. We are not willing to breed, and we are no longer as hardworking or have higher expectations in terms of our employment benefits. However, we cannot take the short cut route and look at the short terms benefits in terms of GDP growth. Rather than bringing the foreigners and creating a unstable society (trust me, there are many pissed off people), why is it that we cannot bite the bullet and try to brain storm ideas to increase birth rates, to control wages for locals. Unfortunately, it is true that I am not a full time labor officer at MOM, so I am not privy to lots of internal discussions or data, which I am sure, has led our urban planners to decide on the current course of actions. However, I do not think that I am wrong in my assessment above and I do would like an opportunity to be proven wrong. As a last word, to these scholars and ministers, I would like to implore your better judgments on 2 fronts. Please trust us to understand your predicament and we will do our best to understand the issues, which we understand is our issues, anyway. Please do not be so insecure in your policy making, talk to us and make us understand, we are your people and responsibility.   Other articles by Lawrence Pek: >> Where is my country going >> Strategies for the next election 2010/11  Read More →