An unkown Bitcoin exchange got hacked and my mobile phone number was obtained by scammers, who spoofed a police phone number and tried to call me to steal from me. The site in question did not notify me of the breach and I want to find out which one it is.<\/p>\n
Today I missed a call on my mobile from a number that showed as 2 253 33 33, a quick Internet search turned up the police of Vilvoorde (far from my home). I thought it strange already that it was missing the normal 0 prefix, but after adding it I managed to call them back.<\/p>\n
After I while I got a friendly lady on the line who explained that they had multiple reports of their number being spoofed by scammers to call people who bought Bitcoin on a site, she couldn't tell me which site that was. <\/p>\n
She went on to tell me the site in question was hacked in so far that the scammers obtained at least detailed customer records including but not limited to name and phone number.<\/p>\n
Now I'm always very reluctant to give out my phonenumber and even more so my mobile number on any site where I purchase things. But for exchanges, your mobile number often is a requirement, and given that it relates to security I know I entered it on some sites, and the total number of sites I did that on is 3 (a 4th as it because they bought one of those 3).<\/p>\n
The interesting bit now is that none of those sites notified me as a customer that there had been a breach and that my data has been stolen. None of those sites publicly made any statements that such a thing happened.<\/p>\n
So, I'm going to make this public and I will try to find out which site got hacked. FYI, none of them hold any funds for me.<\/p>\n
Do you know which site might have messed up, get in touch on bitcoinhack@vansanden.be<\/a> or join my SimpleX group<\/a> for this topic.<\/p>","date_modified":"2026-08-16T09:50:16+00:00","tags":["Bitcoin"]},{"title":"In defense of Brendan Eich","date_published":"2014-04-08T09:00:00+00:00","id":"https:\/\/guyvansanden.be\/blog\/in-defense-of-brendan-eich","url":"https:\/\/guyvansanden.be\/blog\/in-defense-of-brendan-eich","content_html":" This isn't about my opinion of proposition 8.<\/p>\n With that out of the way, I can only be ashamed of the way this situation was handled. I'm shocked by the hypocrisy in our so-called tollerant communities and I'm even more shocked that Mozilla did nothing more to defend it's CEO.<\/p>\n If Eich would have rejected a gay person for a job opening, if he would have fired or mistreated an employee for being gay, all this outrage would be justified an I'd be calling for his head on a silver platter too. But he has not done anything of that kind.<\/p>\n All he did was donate money to a proposition that was accepted by the majority of people in a particular state and we can only assume he voted that proposition too. For this alone, he had to give up a position he did earn through both technical as personal merrits.<\/p>\n So, dear Mozilla, can you please post a list of acceptable political viewpoints that your employees and directors should adhere too? Will you tell them which party to vote for in the comming election under pressure of termination? Because it will be the same as what you did to this person.<\/p>\n All the while, you make friends with companies with questioanble ethics, your morals don't apply there?<\/p>\n You should be deeply ashamed of yourselves, and if you aren't, I'm ashamed for you.<\/p>\n Again, I'm not taking any stance on proposition 8 here, but if I had to call for the resignation of everyone who had any different moral stance than I, there wouldn't be many CEOs left, even in the Open Source communities.<\/p>","date_modified":"2026-08-16T17:32:47+00:00"},{"title":"De 3 wetten der computers","date_published":"2009-02-17T10:00:00+00:00","id":"https:\/\/guyvansanden.be\/blog\/de-3-wetten-der-computers","url":"https:\/\/guyvansanden.be\/blog\/de-3-wetten-der-computers","content_html":" Wie is de eigenaar van je computer? Het lijkt een simpele vraag maar denk er even over na voor je antwoord.<\/p>\n De meeste mensen antwoorden onmiddelijk \"ik\" en logisch gezien zou dat ook zo moeten zijn. Maar de werkelijkheid is een stuk complexer.<\/p>\n Jij bent degene die de factuur voor de hardware heeft betaald en de software heeft aangekocht, maar maakt dat je tot de eigenaar? Het is altijd zo geweest dat je software zoals windows niet kan kopen, je betaald gewoon voor de rechten om het te gebruiken binnen de beperkingen van de licentie die erbij zat (die je trouwens pas kon lezen na de aankoop).<\/p>\n Software is tegenwoordig minstens zo belangrijk als hardware, dus als je commerciele software gebruikt ben je nog maar voor de helft eigenaar van je PC.<\/p>\n De release van Vista is een belangrijke stap in de richting die Windows XP heeft ingezet met gedwongen updates zoals WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) met als eindpunt een PC die jouw activiteiten meer en meer controleert om de belangen van ander bedrijven zoals Microsoft en record labels te beschermen ten koste van jouw rechten.<\/p>\n Buiten kopieerbeveiligingen (zoals activatie) is Windows Vista helenaal volgestopt met iets dat DRM (Digital Rights management) heet. DRM is een systeem om bestanden (films\/muziek) te beschremen tegen kopieren. In de praktijk komt het erop neer dat je computer constant een deel van zijn tijd en middelen moet inzetten om je in het oog te houden en te voorkomen dat je iets doet dat door een derde partij niet toegelaten wordt. Deze derde partij kan de lijst met dingen die je niet mag doen aanvullen en wijzigen door het auto-update mechanisme in Vista.<\/p>\n Deze mate van controle gaat erg ver, als je bv. een videokaart gebruikt die kan gebruikt worden om films mee te onderscheppen door een ontwerp of softwarefout kan dat toestel wereldwijd worden geblokkeerd om te voorkomen dat je beschermde bestanden ermee afspeelt (dus geen HD-DVD video bv). Dit betekent dat je op dat moment je legaal aangekochte media niet meer kan afspelen omdat je computer dat beslist heeft.<\/p>\n De shift in wat je kan doen met je PC tegen wat anderen ermee kunnen doen was al een tijdje bezig, Sony distribueerde een computervirus (technisch een rootkit) op Audio CD's. Deze daad werd nog erger omdat de DMCA-wetgeving in de US het illegaal maakt om dat virus van je PC te verwijderen. Sony is er in geslaagd om de zaken helemaal om te draaien, ze zetten een virus op je PC dat zich op een erg laag niveau vasthecht. Het is onmogelijk en vaak ook onwettelijk om je systeem op te kuisen. In essentie ben je op dat punt de controle over je PC volledig kwijt.<\/p>\n Wat we eigenlijk nodig hebben is iets zoals de \"3 wetten der robotica\" uit de science fiction boeken van Isaac Asimov, maar dan voor computers.<\/p>\n De originele wetten zijn:<\/p>\n Voor onze veel dommere PC's zou dat kunnen zijn:<\/p>\n Een PC mag zijn eigneaar geen schade toebrengen of toelaten dat hem schade wordt toegebracht (gemonitord, beknot, ...)\nEen PC moet zijn eigenaar gehoorzamen\nEen PC moet zichzelf beschermen (updates\/patches) zolang dat niet in conflict komt met de eerste twee wetten (zoals bv de WGA update).\nGelukkig heb je als gebruiker vandaag de mogelijkheid om deze garanties te krijgen, je kan kiezen uit een hele reeks Linux distributies of zelfs minder gebruikte systemen zoals FreeBSD of Minix.<\/p>\n Ja, vandaag verlies je daarmee mogelijk iets in functionaliteit naar gesloten bestandsformaten toe, maar steeds meer mensen maken die keuze. Als de alternatieve systemen critical mass bereiken kan men ze niet langer negeren en zal DRM vanzelf moeten verdwijnen.<\/p>\n Het belangrijkste is dat je op dat punt in ieder geval een computer hebt die van jou is, van het moederbord tot de processor tot de bits en bytes die erdoor gaan en als iemand je mijn originele vraag nog eens zou stellen kan je tenminste oprecht met \"ik\" antwoorden.<\/p>\n Uitgebracht onder de creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licentie.\nVertaald uit mijn oorspronkelijk artikel uit 2007, The three laws of computers.<\/p>","date_modified":"2026-08-16T09:50:54+00:00","tags":["Linux","Windows"]},{"title":"The three laws of computers","date_published":"2007-03-07T10:00:00+00:00","id":"https:\/\/guyvansanden.be\/blog\/three-laws-of-computers","url":"https:\/\/guyvansanden.be\/blog\/three-laws-of-computers","content_html":" Originally posted: March 7th, 2007<\/strong><\/p>\n Who actually owns your computer? It sounds like an easy question, but think about it for a moment before you jump to the answer.<\/p>\n Most people will off course be inclined to answer \"Me!\" and logic would say they are right. But in reality, this is increasingly not the case.<\/p>\n Off course, you are the one that footed the bill for the hardware of your system and you paid for the software on it, so that makes you the owner? In the past it was already the case that you did not own the software on your system if you used MS Windows or any other closed system, you just paid for the right to use it within the limits of the license, a license you mostly didn't get to read until after the purchase. As the software is about as important as the hardware to actually use your computer, it already turns out you already didn't own half of your computer.<\/p>\n The release of Vista marks something that already started to happen on Windows XP with forced 'updates' such as WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage). Your computer will be used more and more to check up on you and to protect the interests of others like Microsoft themselves and the big media companies.F<\/p>\n Besides anti-piracy tools, Vista is rigged from top to bottom with something called DRM (Digital Rights management), a system designed to protect content (like movies) from being copied. What this means in practice is that your computer will spend a portion of its time and resources constantly monitoring you to prevent you from doing something that is not allowed by third parties. These third parties can update the list of things you can and can't do on the fly through the auto-update mechanism in Vista.<\/p>\n This control extends very far, if for example it is found that a certain type of video card allows protected content to be copied (through a flaw in its design or software), that device can be disabled worldwide to prevent it from playing protected content (so no HD-DVD movies for you). So you can no longer view your legally purchased movies on your legally purchased video card because your computer thinks you shouldn't.<\/p>\n In the recent past, the line was already shifting of what you can do with your computer versus what others can do with it. Sony putting a virus on a lot of windows systems is a good example which was made worse by the inaction of both Anti virus companies and Microsoft and laws like the DMCA that actually made it illegal in the US to remove the infection.<\/p>\n But now, the tables are turned completely on you, the virus was installed before you purchased the machine, it is embedded deeply in the roots of your system and it is impossible (sometimes even illegal) to remove it. You essentially lost all control over you system except what it allows you to do and even that can be taken away retroactively.<\/p>\n What we actually need is something like the three laws of robotics, outlined by sience fiction writer Isaac Asimov, for computers.<\/p>\n The original laws are:<\/p>\n We could define them for our much dumber PC's as:<\/p>\n A PC may not harm it's owner or allow him to be harmed (monitored, restricted, ...)\nA PC must obey orders given to it by its owner\/user\nA pc must protect its own existence (updates\/patches) as long as this does not conflict with the first two laws (like the WGA update would).\nFortunately, users today have a choice that guarantees them those three rights. They can choose from an increasingly wider range of Linux distributions to run their computers, they can even turn to FreeBSD or lesser known systems like Minix.<\/p>\n Yes, they will lose some options like playing certain games and viewing content (like encrypted WMV's), but that will change once those alternatives reach critical mass and can no longer be ignored (the situation has already much imporved in recent years).<\/p>\n At least, you will end up with a computer that you own from wires to bytes and back and that will not allow others to dictate what you can and cannot do with it and you will be able to answer my initial question with a real \"Me!\".<\/p>\n Written by Guy Van Sanden\nLicensed under a creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.<\/p>","date_modified":"2026-08-16T09:51:25+00:00","tags":["Linux","Windows"]}]}
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