02 May, 2008

Proxy serving private information

Over the time this blog was locked by blogger a small controversy emerged regarding Etisalat's proxy; it had been serving up private information accidentaly to users. Although the problem has since been resolved, it sets an alarming precedent considering Etisalat doesn't seem to think that it's an issue worth commenting on.

"In a statement to media Google acknowledged that the problem appeared to be a caching error at the ISP, although it declined to name Etisalat as the affected ISP. Etisalat has still not commented on the issue at the time of writing.

The statement from Google reads: "We have had reports of this problem in the UAE and believe it was due to caching being done by a local ISP. We take our users' security very seriously and have made necessary changes to resolve this issue. It should now be fixed, but if users see any more instances, we'd like for them to contact the YouTube support team at http://www.google.com/support/youtube."


more links on the youtube problem:
some screnshots of the problem in action from blog.shijaz.com
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/24/youtube_uae_security_snafu/

In other proxy news...
Internet access provided by du has become significantly slower since the telecommunications company decided to block websites deemed culturally incompatible, members of the business community say."

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Osman Sultan, chief executive officer of du, denied the link between monitoring and speed. “Internet content filtering does not affect internet speed,” he said. LIAR!!! LIAR!!!

But a source close to du said the company had received complaints on the issue and that internet restrictions and network infrastructure upgrades were causing the delays.


What's next ? whoever complains will be deported ?

Dubai Entrepreneur said...

We have found that manually configuring browsers to use etisalat's proxy from du networks significantly increases web speed.

etisalat in the past refused connections from du/tecom to their proxy, but this seems to have changed now. Is du using etisalat's infrastructure for proxy services?

Unknown said...

Pretty major fuckup, I'd advise anyone with a gmail account to make sure their stored emails haven't been compromised, or to account for a possible situation.

Anonymous said...

City of the future.

Anonymous said...

This does not happen if you remember to use httpS connections. As you should for everything you care about including your bank account.

cheers.

Seabee said...

"Etisalat doesn't seem to think that it's an issue worth commenting on"

A company here caring about customers enough to even bother to comment Sam? We pay, they decide whether to give us anything in return, what it will be and when they'll give it to us. We should thank them and never complain. And they certainly don't ever have to explain themselves.

Anonymous said...

When people outside of the region see the hype, the growth and the sheer wealth of the UAE, they make a lot of assumptions regarding what must already be in place; namely a sound infrastructure, laws to protect individuals and civic planning that involves the safety of residents. While I wouldn't go so far as to compare it to the naked emperor, there are some huge gaps that aren't being filled or even considered. These need addressing -soon.

Philip said...

Re: unjane's comment, a message to the rest of the world:

************
ETISALAT AND THE REGULATORY AUTHORITY (TRA) SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AN EMBARRASSMENT TO THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES.
************

Now here is just one rational reason as to why:

The flickr.com block. Agreed, there is obscene content on flickr, but other countries such as Germany have worked with Yahoo on filtering out obscene content. For more info: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/digitalcameras/0,39029429,49291125,00.htm

Instead, Etisalat have no time for this kind of co-operation, and thus BAN THE ENTIRE SITE! Another Emirati missile sent to kill a mosquito so to speak.

Flickr is a very valuable site, many web developers use their API to build creative mash-ups, all of which I can't see. The latest being http://taggalaxy.de/ (creative use of 3D Flash using Papervision3D).

ETISALAT IF GERMANY CAN DO IT, SO CAN THE UAE. YOUR PAYING CUSTOMERS DESERVE MORE.

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