This is interesting propaganda. Busting is too simple. and trade craft is hopeless.

Goals of this exercise:
1. Show support from Foreign media.
2. Amplify via distribution channels.

OpSec failures are hence *a feature*.

/1
The name thedailyguardian.com is chosen to rhyme with theguardian.com, a UK news web site which is critical about the regime.

But chose AWS india as hosting provider (Yuck!)
Here you see long term activation. Close to 10 months but just got activated for this particular information operation.

Building credibility is typically done like this.

But as usual got the cloud config wrong and fake site crashed (They don't get Elastic Load Balancers! )
And this is pretty dumb. Uttar Pradesh? ITV Networks is used to emulate the UK company. But what to do ?
You can't take UP out of the fat finger.
The point of this exercise is to illustrate how even a "dumb fake site" can be widely spread out via distribution effects.

The fact that they could not even keep the website up while the tweets are going around, is how idiotic they are.

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More from @iam_anandv

27 Apr
After scouring half of bangalore, got mum vaccinated for the 2nd dose. Not a single private hospital had vaccine. Only govt. Primary health care centers.

There is cheek-a-bowl crowd and the one before my mother had a high temperature and was pulled out from the crowd.

/1
PHC's are also fever clinics. So you get exposure to the virus there as well. As to masks, not everyone wears it and PHC workers are exhausted.

Lines are long b/c cowin registration does not work and paper IDs are the only thing that work. Otherwise they can do it faster.

/2
4 hours on the Q with cheek-a-bowl crowd containing mix of infected and about to get vaccinated. Quite possible to catch a virus there before the vaccine kicks in and every such death/infection creates vaccine hesitancy.

At 100 doses a day, vaccines are quite scarce.

/3
Read 4 tweets
31 Mar
A full accounting of this disaster will come out soon.
Not looking good. There is more, much more than what has been reported so far.
5 years ago: Sure, you do SQL backups, but have you ever tried restoring them?

Now: We do SQL backups, but misconfigure the AWS backup bucket so badly, that we did not even configure cloud watch logs, and this allows hackers to spawn VMs to check restore and siphon off data.
Read 4 tweets
31 Mar
Tracking media reports on the "Let us break end-to-end encryption by adding hashes" is a time sink. But someone has to do it, so that others need not.

Our first winner in "Not knowing what the subject is" is Money control, which contains these gems:

/1
If two people talking to each other is "National Security risk", it gets better.

No discussion on technology. No discussion on Diffie-Hellman. No discussion on OTR deniability. Just some abstract idea on middle ground.

Basically Baba Ramdev Charlatan territory

/2
We are also back to Clipper chips and key escrows here.

Again notice the lack of one single technical term here. If only we could find a wish fulfilling tree that can work like magic...

/3
Read 7 tweets
9 May 20
If 100 rupees of grain is sent via the PDS distribution channel and only 60 rupees goes to the beneficiary, economists talk about 40% leakage and corruption.

Now if AEPS fails 40% of the time, what is the corruption and leakage? This is world beating technology?
For all practical purposes, transfer costs of moving money from one bank account to another is Zero. NEFT and RTGS are dated systems, but they work reliably.

But AEPS is not NEFT, RTGS. It adds 3 more layers.
The Aadhaar Mapper and 2 Seeding Layers.
Seeding Layer 1 is adding your UID to the benefit scheme.
Seeding Layer 2 is adding your UID to your bank account.

And then Transfer is not to the destination bank account directly but by an intermediate switch called the Aadhaar Mapper.

We have not yet come to distribution.
Read 8 tweets
3 Apr 20
The amazing thing about people criticizing the PM for suggesting lamps and plates is that they simply don't understand him. He has taken the corono crisis to not only increase his follower count, but has also turned them into a cult.
Cults are immune to facts and figures and in fact revel in the irrational and thrive in opposition to the cult. They are fundamentally anti-intellectual and by pass it fully to appeal to the emotions and thereby create long lasting loyalty.
The plate banging and diya lighting are demands to sacrifice rationality. Once done, the follower fully merges with the cult. They may retain their wisdom on other things but their loyalty to the PM is sealed.

(Read Second Foundation, The Mule by Asimov to understand this).
Read 4 tweets
14 Mar 20
I wrote an analysis on how NRC will actually happen and the various stages in it in @LiveLawIndia.

Hint: Hyderabad (the 127 notices) is the template and not Assam.

And yes, #Aadhaar would be at the heart of it, with biometric blacklists of "D" Category.

/1
Biometric blacklists are already a feature and @UIDAI has built it.

"We can not only cancel Aadhaar but also ensure through the offenders' biometric data that they never apply for it again, preventing their re-entry into the system,"

ndtv.com/india-news/aad…
Once marked as "D", the next step would be cancel the number and also the services that is linked with it, using the provisions of the Aadhaar act.

That means "all authentication" stops and all service that needs authentication (PDS) will stop!
Read 6 tweets

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