12 Year old Montreal Hacker

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It is reported that a 12 year old hacker from Montreal was able to hack into websites belonging to the Montreal police, the Quebec Institute of Public Health, the Chilean government, and other, non-public entities. If all checks out, he would be the youngest Canadian known hacker. It is reported that $60,000 of damages were caused by the hacks. There was no word what sort of exploits he had used, however it was reported that the hacker did manage to gain Administrator and User access. I doubt there will be any releases of the exploits he had used, it would have been interesting to see what it was.

Are all the elite hackers from Montreal ? 🙂

Blackberry Messenger BBM Released

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At first I thought it was a joke. But here are the direct links for both Android and Apple, its official Blackberry Messenger BBM is released.

APPLE

ANDROID

Update #1: I have fully enjoyed having BBM on my iPhone. I truly don’t have any complaints and I think Blackberry did a terrific job creating the App on the iOS platform. I haven’t had the chance to try the Android version as of yet, therefore I can’t comment. For me the only feature that its missing is swapping between devices (sorta how iMessage has it setup). Lets say I have an Android Tablet and iPhone. If I have BBM installed on both devices, it would be great if I was able to use both simultaneously. Currently, if you log in one device, it logs you out of the other one.

Many of the other complaints I have been hearing that are lacking are video sharing, video chat, etc. I’m sure those will be added to the future upgrades, however, the App the way it is currently is fantastic.

Web Search Results Required

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Clients have approached me on a countless occasion requiring web search results over the actual web design/development. Web site owners rather keep their out dated content, old layout, old infrastructure, old coding and expect a Search Engine Optimization to place them number 1 on Google search index.

The problem with that assumption is that Google updates its search engine index algorithm monthly if not weekly (possibly daily). The algorithm is constantly evolving and including the latest technologies, trends and social data gathering. More importantly, Google’s main search prerogative is the actual content/information. In simple terms, if your content is 5 years old, and you spend your budget on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it won’t be significant enough for Google to care.

CONTENT IS KEY

PRO TIP: Before attacking SEO, consider changing and or updating your websites content. Google likes updated content, coding, and technology.

Google Hangout for iOS

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If you have updated to the latest version of Google Hangout, you will notice that there is a call option now. And yes it actually works for Canadians (for now). The call quality is superb, and it essentially uses Google Voice technology without all the extra options that you get with Google Voice. Its a start for us Canadians who have been deprived and have not had a chance to legally obtain Google Voice account.

If you are a Canadian, grab the 1.3.0 version and don’t update it. I assume they will disable this for Canadians in the next update. Enjoy free phone calls to Canada and United States.

Direct Link (AppStore)

Rogers down for 3 hours due to software glitch

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Rogers wireless has approximately $9.42 million wireless customers and all of them were down between 6:00 PM and 10:30 PM. The most interesting part is that voice and SMS were down, however DATA was up and running.

The apparent software glitch was due to heavy traffic and was not handled properly by the switching system causing a major crash. There have been no specific reports of how the software works and what it has to do with switches. The assumption is that there is a two way system where one voice is carried over and the other signals between the towers, therefore when you are driving it makes sure that it switches you over to the nearest tower to you. Allegedly that’s what failed which caused the primary system to run into a loop.

There is an underlying denial that hacking was involved taking down the system.

Current result and resolution is the update of the current software thats being used (fixing the hole) and giving all the postpaid subscribers a day of service refund (if you are paying $30 monthly, you would get $1 discount on your next bill).

The most disturbing factor in all of this is that 911 was not functioning. Interesting part is that Rogers recommends users of having a land line if they are required to make 911 phone calls. Who has a land line anymore?

PRO TIP: If your provider is ever down, take out your sim card, reboot the phone and let the phone roam on any network to make that important 911 call. Hopefully, you can do all of these steps while in an emergency situation. Or get a Bell land line.

Search Engine Indexing: Alexa takes out reviews

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If you are a web designer-developer you have heard of Alexa. Alexa is in a way a premium version of Google Analytics. It also provides you with a detailed statistical data of your website.

One of the features that it had was “reviews”. You were able to review other websites that were ranked in the Alexa system. This is no secret but if you had an account with Alexa and had your domains added to your Alexa account and you ended up reviewing other websites your ranking would improve significantly. For example if I left a positive review for Bing.com and Google.com I would see my personal domains get bumped. Alexa will of course deny such a practice but it was evident that it would “help” to leave positive reviews for other domains.

The other issue is that there were services that provided for $ to leave positive reviews for your website. Of course again, that would improve your Alexa ranking even further versus if you left positive reviews yourself.

Alexa has finally decided to take “reviews” out of the equation. If you go on any website under the reviews section you will receive a message that the feature was retired.

There are of course other methods of manipulating Alexa’s rating system, I shall leave that for another article.

Blacklist for stolen phones in effect (Canada’s first)

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The Canadian Cell Phone “blacklist” database has been created a while ago, but it was never implemented by any of the Canadian telecoms. Needless to say the technology has been used in various countries such as U.S. and U.K.

Blackberry if you recall had been using this technology in their own eco-system for many years. What they would do is disable any of the core service such as BBM, and email. Therefore, you were only able to use anything that wasn’t Blackberry service related. They did this particularly with Demo models and did implement stolen blackberries to be included in the database as well.

Why did all the telecoms agree and decided to share the current database. It’s possible due to the rise of robberies in the Greater Toronto Area particularly Rogers stores there was a consensus to kick-start the database.

What’s in included in the database?

IMEI which every handset has. You can check your IMEI by typing *#06#.

Therefore, if you are planning on purchasing a used or new handset, now you can check online if it has been “blacklisted“. Click here

If you are unable to go on the internet to check the IMEI, the easiest way to check is to pop in a SIM correlating to the cell phone. If you are unable to make a phone call the chances are your cell phone was blacklisted.

UPDATE: Its important to note that the database DOES NOT include any of the phones stolen prior to September 30, 2013.