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SPH to Sue Temasek Review?

WayangPartyClub

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The lawyers letter is on its way!!!!!!!!!

http://blogs.straitstimes.com/2009/11/6/attack-on-temasek-review-site-not-sph
geoffa_1.jpg

Geoffrey Pereira


Attack on Temasek Review: Not SPH
November 06, 2009 Friday, 11:40 AM
Geoffrey Pereira explains an accusation based on IP address is mistaken; there was no malicious activity SPH's part.

A COUPLE of days ago, a blog that focuses on Singapore politics carried a posting which accused Singapore Press Holdings of trying to cripple its web server.

Temasek Review (TR) posted its article, "SPH IP address caught 'grabbing' Temasek Review server" on Nov 2.

It started by defining a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack - essentially as when a server is bombarded with requests so as to overload and cripple it.

It then went on to say that its monitoring had shown that during a recent period, there was a flurry of network requests coming from an SPH IP address.

Put this together and it is no less than an accusation that SPH had launched an Internet attack on TR. Many of its own readers, too, saw it as such, though TR tried to deny it in the discussion that followed on the site.

The article ended by fishing out the Computer Misuse Act and warning SPH to not continue its "intrusions" to undermine its site. Or else, it said, it would escalate the matter.

You can read the article in full, here (and if SPH is not being accused of a DOS attack, why associate it with this URL title?):
http://www.temasekreview.com/2009/11/02/sph-and-recent-ddos-attack-on-temasek-review/

Well, the truth is no warning was needed; but perhaps a little more understanding of the Internet by TR.

For, as at least one TR reader pointed out in the discussion the followed on the site, IP addresses by themselves do not prove anything. In fact IP spoofing is a common tactic used in a DOS attack and with information available readily (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address_spoofing) TR should have known that SPH is as easy prey as anyone.

In any case, given the serious allegation made, SPH made checks with its Network Intrusion Protection Services (NIPS) vendor, a reputable multi-national company. We wanted to find out if anyone within the organisation did, indeed, have a go at TR.

Our NIPS vendor found that there was no unusually heavy access to TR during the period of the alleged attack on its site. SPH logs also determined that no one from the company tried to access material from 2008, as claimed by TR.

TR changed the time of the alleged attack (we have print-outs too!! ) some time after the article was first published; but I won't jump up and down the way some bloggers do when an SPH website changes a headline. I'll just put it down to corrections made by TR to improve accuracy.

Nevertheless, data made available to me covered a 3-day period starting before and ending after the alleged attack. It showed that about 25 SPH employees – including yours truly, a regular reader – visited TR; but we did not create the kind of flurry of Net activity that would slow a server down, much less precipitate a DOS.

In fact, from midnight on Nov 1 to about 6 am, (covering a period of the alleged attack) no one from SPH accessed the TR site.

Our NIPS vendor's technical staff member, who checked 7 days worth of data and found no DOS activity originating from SPH concluded: "My opinion of the situation is Temasek Review released the article with very little research into what happened on its server."

It is an expert opinion; but if opinions don't count, here are the facts: Contrary to TRs allegations, neither did anyone in SPH try to "grab" TR material in a way that would load its server; nor did any SPH staffer launch any attack on the server.
 

WayangPartyClub

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TR's reply ...... jia lat liaoooooo

A rebuttal to SPH’s misleading reply: “Attack on Temasek Review – not SPH”

November 6, 2009 by admin
Filed under Top News

Last week, we published an article about a SPH IP address caught “grabbing” content from our site. (read article here)

SPH has since published a reply to our article here

It is most disingenuous of the writer to distort the version of events, put words into our mouths and to throw a smokescreen to confuse and mislead readers into thinking that we have hurled a false accusation at them.

Let us correct the three FACTUAL INACCURACIES in the SPH’s article:

FACT #1: We did not accuse SPH of launching a DDOS attack against our site. ---> then why your url say got dos from sph?

Nowhere in the article did we ever accuse SPH of launching a DDOS attack[/COLOR][/SIZE][/B] to bring down our site. SPH’s article spent a whole section on IP sproofing which is totally irrelevant because its was not about DDOS at all.

The server log we published showed an IP address belong to SPH “grabbing” content from our site. It is easily understood by a layman that “content grabbing” is not equivalent to a DDOS attack.

In fact, we took pains to explain what a DDOS attack means in the first part of our article to prevent readers from getting the wrong idea.

The writer of the article should read through our entire article carefully again.

FACT #2: Timing of the incident occurred between 31st October 2200 hours to 1st November 0100 hours.

As our article had stated clearly, the flurry of network communication requests from the SPH IP took place on 31st October 2009, around 2200 hours to 1st November 0100 hours.

Our correspondent first received the call from the system administrator on 1 November 2009 at around 12.10am.

He typed the article on the spot and the initial date was published as 1 November and it was subsequently amended to between 31st October and 1 November after the entire server log is printed out by the system administrator.

The SPH article wrote:

“In fact, from midnight on Nov 1 to about 6 am, (covering a period of the alleged attack) no one from SPH accessed the TR site.”

Now, did anybody from SPH access the TR site from 31st October 2200 hours to 1st November 0100 hours? This is the critical time period when the “grabbing” was proven to have taken place.

The writer got the timing of the incident completely wrong and used it to disprove our claims about the SPH IP address “grabbing” content from our site.

FACT #3: Our log shows SPH’s IP address accessing material from 2008

As we can see from a snapshot of our log, the IP address 203.116.232.234 which was traced back to SPH by our data center and showed it getting our content from as early as 2008.

SPH claimed that their logs showed otherwise:

“SPH logs also determined that no one from the company tried to access material from 2008, as claimed by TR.”

There can only be two possibilities:

1. The SPH logs did not include the period between 31st October 2009, 2200 hours and 1st November 2009, 0100 hours.

2. Our system administrator, who is a China national, falsified the server log.

Our hosting company is RTG Asia, an outshore VPS and dedicated server provider. Our system administrator is its employee.
---> China big fuck?

Will a Chinese system administrator have any vested interests in TR or SPH? What will he stand to gain by hurling false accusations against SPH?

There is a discrepancy between what SPH said and what was revealed on our log.

If it is proven beyond doubt that the data shown on our log is false and no SPH IP address was “grabbing” our site content during the stipulated period of time, we will offer an UNRESERVED APOLOGY to SPH on Temasek Review under its “TOP NEWS” section immediately. ---> say only. Thought you wanna sue wanbao?

We will also lodge a formal complaint to our hosting company and terminate their services without any delay.

It is now between SPH and RTG Asia. We are as interested as anybody else to find out the truth. ---> classic taichi

SPH should come clean about what happen exactly and show us REAL PROOF of their log instead of relying on half-baked arguments and inconsistent data to mislead the public.
 

cleareyes

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Unfortunately the Chinese National nor his employer RTG Asia did not write an article about it.

So you think SPH will take legal action of libel against TR?

If that were to happen, we can finally know who is behind TR/ex-WP. and after that case is done and dusted, more defamation cases will appear against TR.

I see this as good news for so many innocent ones that TR/ex-WP had tried to destroy.
 

scroobal

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They can't trace this bugger. I doubt its going anywhere. Thats the reason why he is brave making all those allegations and conducting non existent interviews. Bear in mind those video interviews were done by those he conned under SingaporeReview.

So you think SPH will take legal action of libel against TR?

If that were to happen, we can finally know who is behind TR/ex-WP. and after that case is done and dusted, more defamation cases will appear against TR.

I see this as good news for so many innocent ones that TR/ex-WP had tried to destroy.
 

cleareyes

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They can't trace this bugger. I doubt its going anywhere. Thats the reason why he is brave making all those allegations and conducting non existent interviews. Bear in mind those video interviews were done by those he conned under SingaporeReview.

So I guess this bugger can go around and make all sort of claims and no one can do anything about it?

I suppose something needs to be done. I dont care if people try to make a fool of St and PAP, its fun to see it anyway. But what TR is doing is making oppositions look bad and irresponsible. How can we expect the general singapore public to support the opposition when we have so many bad hats spoliting things?
 

scroobal

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Agree with you. This guy really spoils the image of the opposition.

So I guess this bugger can go around and make all sort of claims and no one can do anything about it?

I suppose something needs to be done. I dont care if people try to make a fool of St and PAP, its fun to see it anyway. But what TR is doing is making oppositions look bad and irresponsible. How can we expect the general singapore public to support the opposition when we have so many bad hats spoliting things?
 

MarrickG

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sometime about RTG Asia:
I am facing huge losses due to RTG-Asia's provided server. They are reseller of WHP and like most of the WHP clients they clamied that my server has been hacked and i loosed all data. Their claim is similer to all other incident that can be found on webhostingtalk. Most of the clients were said that their box has been hacked and then they unplug server forever not bothering for doewntime and data. RTG-Asia taken the money from me for this month and they were fooling me since 9th that WHP is working on recovering data. Dispite my many reqest in i asked them to put my hacked drive as secondry and provide me with the same box they forced me to wait till yesterday. Yesterday they provided me with AMD in place of P-4 i rejected and reported to paypal in this case paypal will not going to help me but that may help to ban RTG in paypal.
I request you if u are with RTG asia shift to diffrent place i can provide you with the datacenter which is offer even lesser then RTG-Asia with 99% uptime SLA.

http://www.gidforums.com/t-11510.html

Unfortunately the Chinese National nor his employer RTG Asia did not write an article about it.
 
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