Net enkele dagen voor de afgelopen jaarwisseling hoorde ik voor het eerst van “Korcoin” (KOR) op een populaire lokale televisiezender[1]. In deze reclamespot was er een Spaanssprekende presentatrice die beweerde $5 aan “Korcoin” weg te geven als je een bepaalde “cryptocurrency wallet” app installeert en een bericht zou sturen aan het nummer wat zichtbaar was op het scherm. Hierin werd ook beweerd dat hun “cryptovaluta” de eerste was die haar eigen webwinkel had waar deze “cryptomunt” besteed kon worden voor goederen. Zelfs werd er beweerd dat bezitters van deze “crytovaluta” op kort termijn “winst” zullen maken.

Just a few days before last New Year’s Eve first heard about “Korcoin” (KOR) on popular local TV station[1]. This commercial was in Spanish where the lady presenting in the commercial claimed to give away $5 worth “Korcoin” if you installed a cryptocurrency wallet and messaged the number shown on screen, claiming that their “cryptocurrency” is the first to have its own store so where can spend their “cryptocurrency” for goods. Furthermore, they go on by claiming that you will have “earnings” on the short run by owning the coin.

Het is ons allen niet ontgaan vandaag: de enorme uitval van Facebook en haar dochterbedrijven zoals WhatsApp, Instagram en Messenger. Dit is niet zoals eerdere storingen die het platform had die beperkt waren tot bepaalde regio’s of diensten, en na enkele minuten verholpen waren.

Dit omdat de oorzaak van de storing van vandaag veel complexer is dan eerdere storingen die vermoedelijk “software bugs” waren die snel en gemakkelijk gecorrigeerd kunnen worden binnen het wereldwijde platform.

In deze blogpost probeer ik op een versimpeld te toe te lichten wat er vandaag is gebeurd, de impact hiervan, en waarom dit niet snel opgelost kan worden.

Of beluister mijn interview op Paradise FM over dit onderwerp:

I've been asked by Paradise FM, a local Dutch radio station, to share my expertise and thoughts on the recent development surrounding the (possible) intrusion that took place at the Central Bank of Curaçao and St. Maarten (CBCS). According to the latest press release at the time of writing/the interview, the CBCS claims that a possible intrusion took place through a remote work platform, possibly via a VPN (or similar tunneling) solution). In the interview I gave a brief introduction on VPN's and shared my initial thoughts about possible vulnrabilities exploited:

(interview is in Dutch)

So I recently found out the hard way that reverting back to an earlier/older EdgeRouter firmware image also reverts back to the configuration at the time of upgrade to the newer firmware. I expected the current (latest) configuration to remain active regardless of which firmware version you're running. In my case the router was upgraded to the 2.0.x firmware in our lab, before all production configuration was configured. When troubleshooting an issue I decided to downgrade the firmware just to confirm that this wasn't a result of a possible bug in the 2.0.x firmware. After reverting to the 1.10.x firmware I lost remote access to the router. When connecting to the console port I managed to log in and concluded that the settings ware as they ware at the time of the upgrade to the 2.0.x firmware. Luckily I made a back-up before reverting to the previous firmware so I was able to recover to the production configuration quickly.

username@router:~$ set system image default-boot 
The system currently has the following image(s) installed:

v2.0.9-hotfix.2.5402463.210511.1317 (running image) (default boot) 
v1.10.7.5127989.181001.1228    

Are you sure you want to switch images? (Yes/No) [Yes]: Yes
Moving images... 
Done
Switched from
  Version:      v2.0.9-hotfix.2.5402463.210511.1317
to
  Version:      v1.10.7.5127989.181001.1228
username@router:~$ reboot
Proceed with reboot? [confirm][y]

I thought this might be a word of caution to my peers :)

Last Sunday evening I published an extensive report on Flow Curaçao's internet service. At the time of writing I, as many others (if not for all Flow hybrid fiber customers), were having intermittent speed issues.

Once published the article was immediately picked up by Flow/CWC employes and immediately contacted me on the matter, requesting more in depth info, including subscriber information so they can investigate my findings and narrow down the problem.

I have to say that I am very pleased with the level of commitment shown from the Flow/CWC team to get to the bottom of the issue.

Therefor I am excited to announce that yesterday (June 15^th) the issue was identified and resolved. The issue was a defective interface on a 3rd party provider’s core network.

I can confirm that indeed the issue hasn’t returned since around midday yesterday:

The above graph data are the combined datapoints from June 15^th. In the graph it’s clear that since around 12pm no speeds below 1Mbit/s have been measured, indicating that the previously identified issue has not been observed.
(please ignore the difference in top speeds before/after around 14.30pm as I configure QoS rules to limit the impact on our bandwidth utilization)

A big thank you to the Flow/CWC team for their dedication. And if you’re a Flow internet customer you owe me a beer!