Looking Out To Sea

There’s been a [really interesting discussion] [discussion] going on in various circles about [a bug report that was filed against the Firefox 3 browser] [bug]. The user who reported the problem had been annoyed that Firefox seemed to reject the security certificates of every major website she visited — Paypal, Facebook, Amazon. Each time the browser put up an error message the user would press the button that said “this is all okay, accept this as valid and secure”.

[bug]:

[discussion]:

Of course, the sting in the tail is that it was not Firefox that was in error. This user was being subjected to repeated Man-In-The-Middle attacks — there was someone else between her and the desired website, intercepting all her traffic and putting her privacy in serious jeopardy.

The interesting aspect is that every single error message which Firefox displayed to the user was valid and pertinent. She really was under attack. But the user, savvy enough to report this bug, didn’t realise that these messages weren’t in error. Clearly there is something very wrong with the usability of this system.

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Helen just pointed out that ‘The Green Apple’, an ethical/Fairtrade craft store online, has been hacked by some Islamic fundamentalists. The main page currently has a “closed for maintenance notice” but if you click straight through to the store you see a protest page from some nutty religious group:

After thirty seconds the page directs you to some other site which is about the wonderful prophet.

From a quick look at the guy they’re protesting — Geert Wilders — I don’t really have any sympathy for either side. He seems like the Dutch equivalent of Robert Kilroy Silk (he even has the same daft haircut…):

Take a walk down the street and see where this is going. You no longer feel like you are living in your own country. There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches!

Oh no! More mosques than churches!

On the other side, the Islamofascists are no better. I feel quite happy denouncing someone who would hijack a third party website for their own pointless protest and then claim “sorry for the inconvenience. Our aim is not to harm your system”. Er, yes it is. It was an effective online shop before and now it doesn’t sell anything — what other meaning of harm do you want to use?

Bunch of nutters, the lot of them.

It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy:

The Top Gear host [Jeremy Clarkson] revealed his account numbers [in his newspaper column] after rubbishing the furore over the loss of 25 million people’s personal details on two computer discs.

He wanted to prove the story was a fuss about nothing.

But Clarkson admitted he was “wrong” after he discovered a reader had used the details to create a £500 direct debit to the charity Diabetes UK.

I’m pretty disappointed that they choice Diabetes UK and not, say, Friends of the Earth or some anti-motoring charity. That would have been the icing on the cake.