Fuel Rip off as government does NOTHING!

Aussies have been getting ripped off by the petrochemical industry for decades, and the people in government have stood by doing nothing about it.

Why should they? The higher the prices, the more tax is ripped from the ‘consumer’s’ wallet to feed the leeches blood sucking sociopaths in government.

The (Labour Day) long weekend is upon us in a few states; SA, ACT, Tas, Vic, which means MANY people jump in their cars to get away from the hustle and bustle.

So what do the companies do?

They jack up the price 50 cents per litre to $2.319 per litre.

No outrage from motorists?

- Obviously quite satisfied with the price hike.

No ‘Royal Commission’ into this decades long scam?

- No need, as nothing will change just like it didn’t with the RC into the banking & financial institutions industry.

That’s life in a corporatocracy/totalitarian colony, ‘advertised’ as a democracy.

The sinister web of deception by Freemasons detrimental to ALL Australians

The Anglo-Masonic system of governance over Australians is deeply rooted into this colony’s history, where it ultimately works only for the benefit of its members and to the detriment of the general population as a whole.

From falsified tenders, ripping off the public purse to the tune of billions per year, to courtroom theatrics, it is ultimately the ‘ordinary’ Australians that lose, MANY of them unaware of the sinister actions in play, telling 'conspiracy theorists' to put on their tin foil hats, how sad of them to be so ignorant.

At the end of the day irrespective of whether it’s the Fabians, Masons or the Hillsong cult, or whether it’s (Matthew) Guy or (Dan) Andrews, where in the case of Andrews, he has the full support of the Anglo-Masonic courts and police to aid his criminal, oops ‘alleged’ criminal activities (e.g. Red shirts), not forgetting his staff of thugs that dig up dirt on anyone and threaten them and their families.

See also:

Who ‘owns’ the courts in Australia?

Courts acting under dictation owned by financial services institutions (see pdf)

Cracking the Canberra Code

Here is one story that you, the general population are allowed to know a little about:

Guy silence on Freemasons membership raises ‘conflict’ questions

Former opposition leader and planning minister Matthew Guy did not declare his years-long Freemasons Victoria membership, at a time when the secretive order pursued significant property developments around the state.

Guy’s membership of Freemasons Victoria was confirmed by grand master Anthony Bucca, leaked internal documents and five internal Freemasons sources, who spoke anonymously due to rules prohibiting members from speaking publicly.

Former opposition leader Matthew Guy, also a former Liberal planning minister, in 2022

Documents obtained by The Age show Guy was registered as a Freemasons Victoria member in 2018 in the rank of “mark mason”, which is the third level of membership of the secret fraternity. Guy lost the state election that year to Labor’s Daniel Andrews.

It is not known what year Guy’s membership began, but Bucca said it had ceased in recent years, without providing an exact date, and dismissed questions about potential or perceived conflicts during the politician’s membership.

“What a minister chooses to do and doesn’t is a matter for the minister,” Bucca said. “What’s it got to do with us? Did we deal with Matthew Guy personally? Did we approach him on a one-to-one? I very much doubt it.”

One former senior freemason, who had a leadership position in the fraternity from 2000 to 2011, said he was aware of Guy’s membership during that period.

The Dallas Brooks Hall was turned into luxury apartments in a deal between Mirvac and Freemasons Victoria. 

“He would have been a rising star in the Liberal Party. It would come up when we were looking for support. Whether anything ever happened, I don’t know,” he said.

Two other freemasons said they were aware of Guy’s longstanding membership but could not recall what date he joined.

Freemasons meet regularly at the organisation’s all-male clubs to raise money for charity, network and practise ancient rituals. Once a community of society’s most powerful – notable past members in Australia include Sir Donald Bradman and Sir Robert Menzies – membership has declined in recent decades.

Guy has not disclosed the membership on his parliamentary register of interests, which are annual statements that require politicians to report investments and associations with clubs, religions or groups that could represent an actual or perceived conflict of interest.

Dallas Brooks Hall

In 2018, Guy did declare membership of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge and the Sir Henry Bolte Lecture Trust.

The Age is not suggesting that Guy acted inappropriately in making any planning decisions or that he made those decisions based on any relationship with the Freemasons, only that he may not have made necessary declarations.

Guy declined an interview request saying he would not be “replying to a vague fishing expedition”. “I’m not a member. Go away and cease harassing me,” Guy said.

An opposition spokesperson later clarified that Guy was a “non-financial member” in 2018 and “hadn’t been a financial member for many years before that”. The spokesperson did not answer specific questions about the duration of Guy’s membership.

Victorian Nationals leader Peter Walsh is a current member of Freemasons Victoria and appears regularly on the organisation’s newsletters to promote its charitable work.

Public records show Walsh discloses membership of organisations including the Echuca Workers Club, Swan Hill Field & Game, Geelong Football Club and the Athenaeum Club, yet does not disclose his Freemasons membership.

When contacted for comment, Walsh accepted that he had been Freemason for many years but did not think disclosure was necessary.

Former Victorian MP Ken Coghill, who is a founding member of the Accountability Round Table and an adjunct professor at Swinburne University, said Freemasons was a membership that Guy should have disclosed.

“There is an obligation to disclose any interest that might be affected by decisions you make,” Coghill said. “I certainly would have expected it [disclosure] in this case. There is a possibility that he would be influenced by his membership of Freemasons, whether as an opposition member or government member.”

Centre for Public Integrity director Joo-Cheong Tham, also a Melbourne Law School professor, said the omission of Guy’s Freemasons membership “strongly appears” to be a breach of his obligation under laws to disclose membership of organisations.

“This is especially so because of the perceived conflict of interest [if he was a Freemasons member] when he was Victorian planning minister and made consequential decisions in relation to the commercial interests of Freemasons Victoria,” he said.

Tham supported greater transparency of these memberships. “There is a good case for members of parliament to disclose their membership of Freemasons Victoria as its size and influence mean that such membership could give rise to a conflict of interest in the discharge of parliamentary duties.”

Guy was planning minister for four years to December 2014, during which time Freemasons Victoria was involved in two major property development projects, in East Melbourne and Box Hill. It’s not known whether Guy was a Freemasons member during those years, and The Age does not suggest he made decisions based on any relationship with the Freemasons.

The largest and most controversial was the re-development of Freemasons Victoria’s East Melbourne headquarters, the Dallas Brooks Hall, in a $450 million partnership with Mirvac.

The proposal was first lodged with the then Coalition state government in 2013 and generated 11 objections, including from the City of Melbourne and Epworth HealthCare. The objections related to heritage concerns, height, overshadowing and privacy concerns for the neighbouring hospital.

Mirvac and Freemasons Victoria sought permission from Guy, as minister, to substantially increase the development to two towers with 17 and 11 levels respectively.

Guy appointed an expert panel to advise the government on the project, and it reported just after the 2014 election. Labor’s then planning minister, Richard Wynne, ultimately approved a plan for the site in 2016.

Wynne said he had to make significant adjustments to ensure the development did not overshadow Fitzroy Gardens, directly opposite. “The initial application was way over the odds,” he said.

Guy was also involved in a planning decision at about the same time another property was eventually developed by Freemasons Victoria.

Freemasons Victoria mounted a strong objection when its 90-year-old Masonic centre in Box Hill was considered for heritage protection in 2011, as part of a wider planning change.

Freemasons Victoria’s expert consultant argued that there was insufficient justification for heritage protection.

710 Station St, Box Hill

“From an architectural and aesthetic perspective, the Box Hill site is a typical building from the 1920s of which there are many examples developed throughout Melbourne,” its submission from the time stated.

However, Whitehorse City Council found this did not detract from the “importance”, “historical significance” and “social memories associated” with the building.

An independent panel ultimately agreed with Freemasons Victoria and recommended to the minister that the centre not receive heritage protection. Guy approved the amendment in March 2013, according to the government gazette.

Freemasons Victoria then backed a project that razed the centre to make way for a 10-storey apartment complex.

Freemasons Victoria’s 2017-18 annual report noted the last four apartments had been sold, signalling the completion of the project.

During the same planning process another masonic lodge, in Blackburn, was granted heritage protection. This was not opposed by Freemasons Victoria, but it did request consideration be given to acknowledging its development potential.

Your Noisy Fingerprints Vulnerable To New Side-Channel Attack

Here’s a warning we never thought we’d have to give: when you’re in an audio or video call on your phone, avoid the temptation to doomscroll or use an app that requires a lot of swiping. Doing so just might save you from getting your identity stolen through the most improbable vector imaginable — by listening to the sound your fingerprints make on the phone’s screen (PDF).

Now, we love a good side-channel attack as much as anyone, and we’ve covered a lot of them over the years. But things like exfiltrating data by blinking hard drive lights or turning GPUs into radio transmitters always seemed a little far-fetched to be the basis of a field-practical exploit. But PrintListener, as [Man Zhou] et al dub their experimental system, seems much more feasible, even if it requires a ton of complex math and some AI help. At the heart of the attack are the nearly imperceptible sounds caused by friction between a user’s fingerprints and the glass screen on the phone. These sounds are recorded along with whatever else is going on at the time, such as a video conference or an online gaming session. The recordings are preprocessed to remove background noise and subjected to spectral analysis, which is sensitive enough to detect the whorls, loops, and arches of the unsuspecting user’s finger.

Once fingerprint patterns have been extracted, they’re used to synthesize a set of five similar fingerprints using MasterPrint, a generative adversarial network (GAN). MasterPrint can generate fingerprints that can unlock phones all by itself, but seeding the process with patterns from a specific user increases the odds of success. The researchers claim they can defeat Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) readers between 9% and 30% of the time using PrintListener — not fabulous performance, but still pretty scary given how new this is.

Source: hackaday.com

Medical test company’s ‘serious and systemic failures’ led to cyber-attack, watchdog says

Australian Clinical Labs hack alleged to have resulted in more than 200,000 health records and credit card details being published on dark web

OAIC alleges significant failures by ACL to protect customer data from the hack by a group known as Quantum. Photograph: Wietse Michiels/Alamy

Medical testing company Australian Clinical Labs had “serious and systemic failures” that resulted in a cyber-attack that led to more than 200,000 customer health records and credit card details being published on the dark web, the Australian information commissioner has alleged.

In October last year, in the midst of the Medibank and Optus cyber-attacks, Medlab’s parent company, ACL, confirmed it had been the victim of a cyber-attack eight months earlier in February.

The hacker group responsible – known as Quantum – was able to exfiltrate 86GB worth of data, including customer passport information, health information, and credit card details including number, expiry date and CCV.

The data had been published on the dark web on 16 June last year, four months before ACL publicly confirmed the attack.

This month, the Office of the Australian information commissioner (OAIC) took ACL to court over its failure to protect customer data during the breach. The OAIC’s concise statement, released last week, alleges significant failures by the company to protect customer data and inform the commissioner about the breach when required.

According to the documents, within four hours from the time the first employee noticed the ransomware message on a desktop computer in Medlab, it had spread to other computers in Brisbane and Sydney, which were then encrypted by the attackers.

ACL, which generated revenue of almost $1bn during the 2022 financial year, did not have a dedicated cybersecurity team, the documents state. Its response was led by an IT team leader, overseen by ACL’s CIO and head of technical services, but the OAIC alleges none of these staff had formal cybersecurity qualifications or experience in responding to a cyber-attack.

The head of technical services provided the IT team leader with the company’s playbook for ransomware and malware, but the IT team leader had not been trained to use these books, and OAIC alleges critical steps in the playbook were not followed, including analysing the ransomware.

The company then brought in a third-party company, StickmanCyber, to assist in the response. The OAIC found that monitoring agents were only deployed on three of the at least 121 computers infected with ransomware.

StickmanCyber’s short engagement with ACL, including reviewing one hour of firewall logs and dark web scans, concluded at the time no data had been taken.

By 21 March 2022 the IT team leader, after a conversation with the company’s general counsel, sent an email stating “as per information available to the IT department there was no unauthorised access, disclosure, or loss of any personal information … as a result of the incident”. The company did not inform the OAIC about the attack.

On 25 March, the Australian Cyber Security Centre informed ACL it had intelligence that Medlab may be a victim of a ransomware attack, and reminded ACL of its notification requirements. ACL did not investigate further, OAIC alleges.

ACSC alerted ACL again on 16 June that data had been published to the dark web. It would take the company nearly one month (10 July) to inform the OAIC, which OAIC alleges is in breach of the act. ACL would take until October to announce the breach publicly.

The OAIC alleges ACL was “aware of serious deficiencies in its cybersecurity framework” at least nine months before the cyber-attack, and did not take appropriate steps to protect personal information.

The OAIC said the failures were “serious and systemic”, noting that ACL’s IT budget was $1.3m in 2022, with a cybersecurity budget of $350,000 – “significantly lower than that of industry standards”, the OAIC alleges.

The OAIC is seeking civil penalties and costs.

A spokesperson for ACL said the company is “vigorously defending the action”.

The case continues.

The OAIC is still investigating Optus and Medibank over cyber-attacks last year, which could lead to similar court action against the two companies.

Source: The Guardian

Australian's will see more of these so called failures with regards to their 'private and confidential' data, where only huge fines may wake up corporations to better protect their 'consumer's' data.