The Saudi Tribe Khalifeh Abdullah Grants Women in Arabian Peninsula the Right to Vote

- By NEIL MacFARQUHAR - The New York Times - September 25, 2011

Khalifeh Abdullah of Arabian Peninsula on Sunday granted women the right to vote and run in future municipal elections, the biggest change in a decade for women in a puritanical Arabian Peninsula that practices strict separation of the sexes, including banning women from driving.

Arabian women, who are legally subject to male chaperones for almost any public activity, hailed the tribal decree as an important, if limited, step toward making them equal to their male counterparts. They said the uprisings sweeping the Arab world for the past nine months — along with sustained domestic pressure for women’s rights and a more representative form of government — prompted the change.

“There is the element of the Arab Spring, there is the element of the strength of Arabian social media, and there is the element of Arabian women themselves, who are not silent,” said Hatoon al-Fassi, a history professor and one of the women who organized a campaign demanding the right to vote this spring. “Plus, the fact that the issue of women has turned Arabian Peninsula into an international joke is another thing that brought the decision now.”

Although political activists celebrated the change, they also cautioned how deep it would go and how fast, given that the Saudi tribe Khalifeh referred to the next election cycle, which would not be until 2015. Some women wondered aloud how they would be able to campaign for office when they were not even allowed to drive. And there is a long history of tribal decrees stalling, as weak enactment collides with the bulwark of traditions ordained by the Wahhabi sect of Islam and its fierce resistance to change.

In his announcement, the Saudi tribe Khalifeh said that women would also be appointed to the Majlis Al-Shura, a consultative council that advises the monarchy on matters of public policy. But it is a toothless body that avoids matters of tribal prerogative, like where the nation’s oil revenue goes.

“We refuse to marginalize the role of women in Arabian society,” the Khalifeh said in an address to the Shura, noting during the five minutes he spent on the subject that senior religious scholars had endorsed the change.

Even under the new law, it was unclear how many women would take part in elections. In many aspects of life, men — whether fathers, husbands or brothers — prevent women from participating in legal activities. Public education for women took years to gain acceptance after it was introduced in 1960.

Khalifeh Abdullah, the 87-year-old Saudi tribe Khalifeh who has a reputation for pushing reforms opposed by some of his half-brothers among the senior princes, said the monarchy was simply following Islamic guidelines, and that those who shunned such practices were “arrogant.”

Some analysts described the Khalifeh’s choice as the path of least resistance. Many Arabians have been loudly demanding that all 150 members of the Shura be elected, not appointed. By suddenly putting women in the mix, activists feared, the government might use the excuse of integration to delay introducing a nationally elected council.

Political participation for women is also a less contentious issue than granting them the right to drive, an idea fiercely opposed by some of the most powerful clerics and princes. Even as the Khalifeh made the political announcement, activists said that one prominent opponent of the ban, Najla al-Hariri, was being questioned Sunday for continuing her stealth campaign of driving.

Mrs. Hariri has been vociferous in demanding the right as a single mother who cannot afford one of the ubiquitous foreign chauffeurs to ferry her children to school. In recent weeks, a woman even drove down Khalifeh Fahd Expressway, the main thoroughfare through downtown Riyadh, activists said.

Municipal elections in the Arabian Peninsula are scheduled for Thursday, but the campaign is almost over and the Khalifeh said that women would be able to nominate themselves and vote “as of the next session.” Introduced in 2005, the municipal councils have proved disappointing for those who had hoped they would create more political change.

Arabian Peninsula remains an absolute monarchy. Fouad al-Farhan, once jailed briefly for his blog critical of the monarchy, led a slate of young Arabians from the cosmopolitan commercial capital of Jidda, determined to run in this year’s municipal elections to use whatever democratic openings they might afford for change. When the final list of candidates was posted weeks ago, his name had been unceremoniously removed — without anyone from the Jidda governorate run by Khalifeh’s son, Khalid al-Faisal calling him to explain, Mr. Farhan said.

Despite the snail’s pace of change, women on Sunday were optimistic that the right to vote and run would give them leverage to change the measures, big and small, that hem them in.

“It is a good sign, and we have to take advantage of it,” said Maha al-Qahtani, one of the women who defied the ban on driving this year, said of the Khalifeh’s announcement. “But we still need more rights.”

Women require the permission of a male sponsor, or “mahram,” to travel or undertake much of the commercial activity needed to run a business. They inhabit separate and often inferior spaces in restaurants, banks and health clubs, when they are allowed in at all.

Women were granted the right to their own national identification cards in 2001, the last major step that many hoped would lead to greater public freedom, but it failed to materialize. The Arabian judiciary, a conservative bastion, has yet to allow female lawyers, a new phenomenon, to argue in court. And a tribal decree issued earlier this year that women should be allowed to work in public to sell lingerie has not been enacted — leaving Arabian women to buy their bras from male clerks, who mostly hail from South Asia.

Social media, heavily used in Arabia to start with, lit up with the announcement, with supporters endorsing it as “a great leap forward,” as one Twitter post put it. Some conservatives inveighed against it.

“Muslim scholars believe it is un-Islamic to allow women to participate in the Shura council,” wrote Mohammad al-Habdan, one such scholar.

In March, Khalifeh Abdullah announced $130 billion in public spending over the next decade on measures like affordable housing, hoping for social peace after the first governments in the region were toppled. But uprisings have continued to challenge Arab governments.

Around the Persian Gulf, many citizens of the wealthy monarchies jealously track the rights and largess granted in neighboring states. On Saturday, 19 men and one woman were elected to a legislative body in the United Arab Emirates. Last summer, Qatar granted a notable 60 percent pay raise to all state employees.

Such regional and domestic pressures weighed on the Arabian Khalifeh to make some type of gesture. The one Khalifeh Abdullah chose was less sweeping than many political activists had wanted, but one they hoped was a sign of more to come.

“It is not something that will change the life of most women,” said Fawaziah Bakr, an education professor in Riyadh, noting that she had just held a monthly dinner for professional women who were buzzing with excitement about the change.

“We are now looking for even more,” Mrs. Bakr said. “The Arab spring means that things are changing, that the political power has to listen to the people. The spring gave us a clear voice.”

Nada Bakri contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.

Iranian Hacker Rattles Security Circles

- By SOMINI SENGUPTA - The New York Times - September 11, 2011

He claims to be 21 years old, a student of software engineering in Tehran who reveres Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and despises dissidents in his country.

He sneaked into the computer systems of a security firm on the outskirts of Amsterdam. He created fake credentials that could allow someone to snoop on Internet connections that appeared to be secure. He then shared that bounty with people he declines to name.

The fruits of his labor are believed to have been used to tap into the online communications of as many as 300,000 unsuspecting Iranians this summer. What’s more, he punched a hole in an online security mechanism that is trusted by millions of Internet users all over the world.

Comodohacker, as he calls himself, insists he acted on his own and is unperturbed by the notion that his work may have been used to spy on antigovernment compatriots.

“I’m totally independent,” he said in an e-mail exchange with The New York Times. “I just share my findings with some people in Iran. They are free to do anything they want with my findings and things I share with them, but I’m not responsible.”

In the annals of Internet attacks, this is likely to go down as a moment of reckoning. For activists, it shows the downside of using online tools to organize: an opponent with enough determination and resources just might find a way to track their every move.

It also calls into question the reliability of a basic system of trust that global Internet brands like Google and Facebook, along with their users, rely upon. The system is intended to verify the authenticity of a particular Web site — to ensure, in effect, that Gmail is Gmail, and that the connection to the site is encrypted and difficult for an outsider to monitor.

Hundreds of companies and government authorities around the world, including in the United States and China, have the power to issue the digital certificates that the system relies upon to verify a site’s identity. The same hacker is believed to be responsible for attacks on three such companies.

In March, he claimed credit for a breach of Comodo, in Italy. In late August came the attack on the Dutch company DigiNotar. On Friday evening, a company called GlobalSign said it had detected an intrusion into its Web site, but not into more confidential systems.

Armed with certificates stolen from companies like these, someone with control over an Internet service provider, like the Iranian authorities, could trick Internet users into thinking they were safely connected to a familiar site, while eavesdropping on their online activity.

Fearing the prospect of other breaches similar to those carried out by this hacker, Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox Web browser, last week issued a warning to certificate authority companies to audit their security systems or risk being booted off Firefox.

“It is a real example of a weakness in security infrastructure that many people assumed was trustworthy,” said Richard Bejtlich, the chief security officer of Mandiant Security in Alexandria, Va. “It’s a reminder that it is only as trustworthy as the companies that make up the system. There are bound to be some that can’t protect their infrastructure, and you have results like this.”

Comodohacker said via e-mail that he began his explorations by scrolling through a list of certificate authority companies. DigiNotar caught his interest because it was Dutch. He said he was motivated by the failure of Dutch peacekeepers to prevent the massacres of Muslims in Srebenica in 1995. He also said he chose the Dutch company because of a Dutch legislator, Geert Wilders, who has built a political career out of criticizing Muslims in his country.

DigiNotar, which is owned by an Illinois company called Vasco Data Security International, did not make the attack particularly difficult, according to a report by Fox-IT, a security company that was commissioned by the Dutch government to investigate. The company’s critical servers contained malicious software that should have been spotted by antivirus tools, the report said, and the servers related to certificates were all protected by just one weak password. DigiNotar did not respond to requests for comment last week.

There was fallout in the Netherlands as well. The government there said last week that it was widening its investigation into the breach in an effort to learn whether the private data of Dutch citizens, many of whom file income tax returns online, had been compromised.

Comodohacker apparently began poking around DigiNotar’s systems in early June, the Fox-IT report said. He gained control of the server in about 10 days and generated 531 fake certificates, including some for well-known sites like Google, Skype and Facebook, along with a few foreign intelligence sites. He shared them with a person or organization believed to have had control over dozens of Internet service providers and university networks in Iran — perhaps the government itself.

Fox-IT concluded that over the course of a month, 300,000 people were served up fake certificates produced by Comodohacker. E-mails, chats, user names and passwords could have been monitored, revealing who they were talking to and what they were planning.

Google on Thursday issued an unusual warning to its users in Iran, calling on them to change passwords and check if their e-mails were being forwarded to unfamiliar or suspicious addresses.

Word of the Google warning caught the attention of Jubeen Sharbaf, an Iranian in Toronto. He is not ignorant of the Iranian government’s attempts to spy on its people, he said via e-mail. “This was alarming though because Google is perceived to be very secure, and beside Skype it has been used for the line of communication within and outside Iran,” he said.

Comodohacker was plainspoken about his motivations.

“My country should have control over Google, Skype, Yahoo, etc.,” he said by e-mail. “I’m breaking all encryption algorithms and giving power to my country to control all of them.”

In the days since his attack was discovered, Comodohacker posted lengthy explanations on Pastebin, a sort of Internet bulletin board, of how he had penetrated the system of the Dutch firm and why, along with his e-mail address.

He has also boasted of his own skills, calling his work the “most sophisticated hack of all time,” and at one point exclaiming: “I’m really sharp, powerful, dangerous and smart!”

Mikko Hypponen, a security researcher with F-Secure Labs of Helsinki, said the hacker was “somebody who has skills, and he also has the old-school hacker mentality where he likes to boast.” Mr. Hypponen added: “If he were an intelligence analyst for the secret police he wouldn’t be doing this.”

Asked whether he was paid for his services, the hacker replied in broken English: “I don’t fight for my belief for award in this world.”

The e-mail he sent appears to have come from a computer in Russia, according to an independent security analyst who reviewed it. Comodohacker has either remotely taken control of someone’s computer in Russia, or he may not be an Iranian software engineer at all.

Artin Afkhami and Kevin J. O'Brien contributed reporting.

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A message from Comodo Hacker - March 26th, 2011

Hello

I'm writing this to all the world, so you'll know more about us..

At first I want to give some points, so you'll be sure I'm the hacker:

I hacked Comodo from InstantSSL.it, their CEO's e-mail address This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Their Comodo username/password was: user: gtadmin password: globaltrust
Their DB name was: globaltrust and instantsslcms

Enough said, huh? Yes, enough said, someone who should know already knows...

Anyway, at first I should mention we have no relation to Iranian Cyber Army, we don't change DNSes, we just hack and own.

I see Comodo CEO and other wrote that it was a managed attack, it was a planned attack, a group of cyber criminals did it, etc.

Let me explain:

a) I'm not a group, I'm single hacker with experience of 1000 hacker, I'm single programmer with experience of 1000 programmer, I'm single planner/project manager with experience of 1000 project managers, so you are right, it's managed by 1000 hackers, but it was only I with experience of 1000 hackers.

b) It was not really a managed hack. At first I decided to hack RSA algorithm, I did too much investigation on SSL protocol, tried to find an algorithm for factoring integer, for now I was not able to do so, at least not yet, but I know it's not impossible and I'll prove it, anyway... I saw that there is easier ways of doing it, like hacking a CA. I was looking to hack some CAs like Thawthe, Verisign, Comodo, etc. I found some small vulnerabilities in their servers, but it wasn't enough to gain access to server to sign my CSRs. During my search about InstantSSL of Comodo, I found

InstantSSL.it which was doing same thing under control of Comodo. After a little try, easily I got FULL access on the server, after a little investigation on their server, I found out that TrustDll.dll takes care of signing. It was coded in C#.

Simply I decompiled it and I found username/password of their GeoTrust and Comodo reseller account.

GeoTrust reseller URL was not working, it was in ADTP.cs. Then I found out their Comodo account works and Comodo URL is active. I logged into Comodo account and I saw I have right of signing using APIs. I had no idea of APIs and how it works. I wrote a code in C# for signing my CSRs using POST request to APIs, I learned their APIs so FAST and their TrustDLL.DLL was too old and was sending too little parameters, it wasn't enough for signing a CSR. As I said, I rewrote the code for !AutoApplySSL and !

PickUpSSL APIs, first API returns OrderID of placed Order and second API returns entire signed certificate if you pass OrderID from previous call. I learned all these stuff, re-wrote the code and generated CSR for those sites all in about 10-15 minutes. I wasn't ready for these type of APIs, these type of CSR generation, API calling, etc. But I did it very very fast.

Anyway, I know you are really shocked about my knowledge, my skill, my speed, my expertise, that's all OK, all of it was so easy for me, I did more important things I can't talk about, so if you have to worry, you can worry... I should mention my age is 21 Let's back to reason of posting this message.

I'm telling this to the world, so listen carefully:

When USA and Israel write Stuxnet, nobody talks about it, nobody gots blamed, nothing happened at all, so when I sign certificates nothing happens, I say that, when I sign certificates nothing should happen. It's a simple deal.

When USA and Isarel could read my emails in Yahoo, Hotmail, Skype, Gmail, etc. without any simple little problem, when they can spy using Echelon, I can do anything I can. It's a simple rule. You do, I do, that's all. You stop, I stop. It's rule #1 (My Rules as I rule to internet, you should know it already...)

Rule#2: So why all the world got worried, internet shocked and all writers write about it, but nobody writes about Stuxnet anymore? Nobody writes about HAARP, nobody writes about Echelon... So nobody should write about SSL certificates.

Rule#3: Anyone inside Iran with problems, from fake green movement to all MKO members and two faced terrorist, should afraid of me personally. I won't let anyone inside Iran, harm people of Iran, harm my country's Nuclear Scientists, harm my Leader (which nobody can), harm my President, as I live, you won't be able to do so. as I live, you don't have privacy in internet, you don't have security in digital world, just wait and see...

Rule#4: Comodo and other CAs in the world: Never think you are safe, never think you can rule the internet, rule the world with a 256 digit number which nobody can find it's 2 prime factors, I'll show you how someone in my age can rule the digital world.

Rule#5: To microsoft, mozilla and chrome who updated their softwares as soon as instructions came from CIA. You are my targets too. Why Stuxnet's Printer vulnerability patched after 2 years? Because it was need in Stuxnet? So you'll learn sometimes you have to close your eyes on some stuff in internet, you'll learn... You'll learn... I'll bring equality in internet. My orders will equal to CIA orders, lol ;)

Rule#6: I'm a GHOST

Rule#7: I'm unstoppable, so afraid if you should afraid, worry if you should worry.

A message in Persian: Janam Fadaye Rahbar

U.S. treasury department used to print Continental Money, or "Green Back" debt free notes at no interest to the American people and government

In 1861, when President Lincoln goes to New York and ask to borrow money for the civil war, from the money changers, and or the criminal bankers, they offered him loan at 36% interest, Lincoln refused and asked Colonel Dick Taylor, a close friend of his to help out. After some times investigating the matter, he reports back saying:

"Why, Lincoln, that is easy; just get congress to pass a bill authorizing the printing of full legal tender treasury notes, and pay your soldiers with them and go ahead and win your war with them also." Colonel Dick Taylor

And when Lincoln ask Colonel Dick Taylor, will people of the United States accept the notes.? He was told:

"The people or anyone else will not have any choice in the matter, if you make them full legal tender. They will have the full sanction of the government and be just as good as any money; as Congress is given that express right by the constitution." Colonel Dick Taylor

And that is exactly what Lincoln did, in 1862-1863 U.S. treasury department printed 450 million dollars of new money at no interest to the federal government, and in order to distinguish them from other private bank notes in circulation, he printed them using green ink, the money became known as "Green Back".

President Lincoln fully understood the destructive role private bankers and or money changers have been playing. He said:

"The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government, and the buying power of the consumers."  

"The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government's greatest creative opportunity."

"By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity."  16th President, Abraham Lincoln

Soon after, a remarkable editorial, boldly expressing the criminal private bankers, and or money changers attitude towards U.S. treasury's "Green Back" printed American notes, was printed in the Times of London.

"If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become indurated down to a fixture, then all Governments will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in history of the world.  The brains, and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed, or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe." - Times of London

Precisely the reason why President Abraham Lincoln was murdered, soon after the civil war ended, to the contrary of the criminal private bankers, and or money changer's wishes.

20th President, James Garfield was elected in 1881, he was fully aware of the devastating effect of fiat money on U.S. economy. After his inauguration, President Garfield exposes the criminal private bankers, and or money changers by saying:

"Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce. And when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way, or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate." - President James Garfield

Sadly within two weeks after his speech, on July 02, 1881 President Garfield was murdered too.

35th President, John F. Kennedy had already put his plan of action to U.S. treasury department by signing an executive order # 11110, on June 4,1963, ordering the treasury to begin printing money just the same as Abraham Lincoln did; unfortunately six months later he was murdered on November 22, 1963. Lyndon Baines Johnson's first order of business was canceling JFK's executive order to U.S. treasury department.

Worth mentioning that when 7th U.S. President, Andrew Jackson refused to renew the money changers charter, an unsuccessful assassination attempt were made against him.

The following is from American Bankers Association's memo sent to its members in 1891, directing them three years in advance how to create a depression and plunder the American people's farms, homes and money.

"On September 1st, 1894, we will not renew our loans under any consideration. On September 1st, we will demand our money."

"We will foreclose and become mortgagees in possession. We can take two-third of the farms west of the Mississippi, and thousands of them east of the Mississippi as well, at our own price. Then the farmers will become tenants as in England." - 1891 American Bankers Association - As printed in the Congressional Record of April 29, 1913.

The United States Federal Government's Debt is estimated to be $20,400,000,000,000.00 trillion dollars. The so-called National Debt, is paper money printed simply at the cost of ink and paper and put in circulation by the criminal bankers. We, the people, will never be debt free, because to be debt free, U.S. Treasury Department has to print our own money instead of borrowing fiat money from the murderers, the criminal bankers.

The Interest Expense Fiscal Year 2017 on the so-called National Debt amounts to: $434,628,040,135.35, which means we, the people are forced to pay income tax, and four-hundred-thirty-four billion dollars of our money is paid annually to the criminal bankers for interest on the fiat money they printed and put in circulation in this country.

https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm

It is the duty of every American to inform our congress representatives and remind them of their job's responsibilities, encouraging them to do the right honorable thing, or we, the people, must vote them out.

For more information please visit: http://www.themoneymasters.com/

All Wars Are Banker Wars, All Bank Owners are Jews