IT WAS ME. I HACKED JOHN DALLI’S EMAIL ACCOUNT.
If this were New York or London, there would be T-shirts on sale on the stalls already, with the slogan:
I HACKED JOHN DALLI’S EMAIL ACCOUNT
And it would be just as popular as the one in the last election which said:
VOTE LABOUR? IN*ABBAB.
And if John Dalli reacts by behaving like Lisa Minelli in her later years and her more disturbed moments, good luck to him.
So let me just fess up. IT WAS ME. I HACKED JOHN DALLI’S EMAIL ACCOUNT. I HAVE ALL HIS EMAILS, AND NO, HE ISN’T HAVING A LOVE AFFAIR WITH A CIRCUS PERFORMER OR IN SECRET CORRESPONDENCE WITH SAIF GADDAFI.
I now await the knock at the door.
timesofmalta.com reported some hours ago:
The EU Commissioner recalled that during a PN general conference in 2004, he had pointed out that that party was making certain Nationalists feel uncomforatable. The situation has since worsened and the responsibility for this should be shouldered by who was leading the party.
Kif ma jisthix? What really gets me, though, is the way reporters fail to put his words into the proper context for their readers, which is their job, their duty and what they are there to do.
Since 2004, i.e. when Lawrence Gonzi become party leader.
Lawrence Gonzi became party leader by defeating John Dalli.
John Dalli had really, seriously thought he was going to win the leadership race. His expectations were so unrealistic that he never recovered from the shock and has spent the last eight years backbiting the victor.
Sixty-five years old, and he’s still a sore loser. But isn’t that what they all have in common? Sore losers, the lot of them.
Something else reporters have failed to do. They have failed to ring up the necessary people and ask whether it is possible to trace an IP number to a person unless you are the police or the administrator of the ISP which hosts that IP.
I can give reporters that answer myself: NO, IT IS NOT POSSIBLE. IF IT WERE POSSIBLE, THEN IT IS SCREAMINGLY, BLOODY OBVIOUS THAT TIMESOFMALTA.COM WOULD KNOW THE TRUE IDENTITY OF ALL THE ANONYMOUS PEOPLE COMMENTING ON ITS BOARD, BECAUSE WHEN YOU COMMENT, YOUR IP NUMBER SHOWS UP.
AND I WOULD KNOW THE EXACT, PRECISE, TRUE IDENTITY OF ALL THE PEOPLE COMMENTING ON THIS SITE, BECAUSE I HAVE AN IP NUMBER FOR EVERY COMMENT, INCLUDING THE ONES THREATENING ME WITH MURDER AND ASSAULT.
The only people with the authority to trace the identity of users of an IP number are the police, through their Cyber Crime unit, and even they come up against major obstacles because of Data Protection laws not only in Malta but especially elsewhere.
Now, dear reporters, please listen clearly to what bossy Daphne says, and remember that your duty was to discover this for yourselves and report it to your readers accordingly:
THERE IS NO WAY ON EARTH THAT JOHN DALLI COULD POSSIBLY HAVE NAMES LINKED TO AN IP NUMBER UNLESS HE HAS BROKEN THE LAW. GIVEN THAT HE IS AN EU COMMISSIONER, THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS TRANSGRESSION. IF HE HAS NOT BROKEN THE LAW TO GET THAT INFORMATION, THEN ALL HE HAS ARE PARANOID SUSPICIONS.
And this is quite apart from the fact that hackers don’t use an IP registered in the jurisdiction where they live. If they are smart enough to hack, they are smart enough to use a roaming IP or one registered in, say, Mali.
And now, after that brief interlude when the T-shirt slogan was too much to resist, and I couldn’t stand any more to see reporters missing the obvious point that John Dalli, like the rest of us, has no way of linking IPs to names, let’s allow that sore loser to sulk around in his Portomaso flat before catching his flight back to his very expensive and well-paid Brussels prison, and turn our attention back to the people Dalli hopes will give him his heart’s desire for a Sargas power station contract.
Over and out.
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He said his email account was hacked on the 12th of this month. Microsoft reported a security problem with over 42,000 hotmail addresses that same day.
[Daphne – Please don’t tell me that this is an EU Commissioner with a hotmail address. Oh dear God.]
Yahoo had a recent outbreak recently too… do you have any links to the Hotmail security problem you mentioned ?
My hotmail address had to be taken down, it was sending spam to my contacts abroad, mostly Alice and Virgilio servers.
Daphne, the man feels hurt and betrayed also. Something had happened where he was put in bad light. Was his brother charged with a crime in 2004? Who came out with the allegation that John Dalli had received kickbacks while he was the minister of health?
[Daphne – ‘The man feels hurt and betrayed’. The man is 65 years old and an EU Commissioner. The man needs to grow up before it’s too late. And if I were the man, I certainly wouldn’t be defending a brother involved in drug deals who then runs off to Libya to escape the police, causing me maximum political embarrassment. I would disown him.]
T-shirts on order:
“I got Sant the Mistra contract but he messed up”.
“I went to the right yacht and had a blast”.
“I do my missionary work in my bedroom.”
“My friend went to Mistra and all he got me was this lousy teapot”
One has to admit though that the spectrum of conspirators is made up of disillusioned and disappointed party activists who are bad losers. They have such a poor opinion of the party that they feel they can get away with it and possibly make a come back at a future date.
It has never happened in local political history and I don’t see why it should happen now.
The conspirators claiming to be the victims of a conspiracy: it must be the heat wave.
How about these:
I LOST JOSEPH’S ROADMAP.
I AM PART OF THE CLIQUE
MEMBER OF THE EVIL CLICK
How about these:
I AM USING JOSEPH’S ROADMAP, BUT I AM LOST.
TO BECOME A MEMBER OF THE CLICK, CLIQUE ON LIKE.
WHERE CAN I BUY A MISTRA?
MY BEST FRIENDS ARE BLACK WITH ENVY.
MY MISTRA LAND DESPERATELY NEEDS A NEW LEASE OF LIFE.
How about:
REPENT THE END IS NEAR.
[Daphne – Silvio, look out for my column tomorrow. You will find the subject interesting: a study which shows that right-wing views and prejudice are linked to lower intelligence. So do yourself a favour and don’t show off about it. Your hero John Dalli is making his problems in this department patently clear already.]
I do not consider Dalli as my hero but just a man who has been wronged by who he thought were his friends, which I consider as the worst type of betrayal.
[Daphne – Oh, for God’s sake. Do you actually realise just how sick this kind of behaviour is?]
Of course I will look out for your column, I always do as most time I find it interesting and always well written.
But a small word of fatherly advice. You don’t have to advertise your column. It surely does not need it.
[Daphne – Silvio, I only told you about it because it’s a subject that will interest you.]
How about this:
DCG
MAKES ME
CLICK
So very disappointing!
I don’t think that anyone can deny that John Dalli before 2004 was a big asset to the Nationalist Party and I, for one (rightly or wrongly) always defended him when people in my circle fell for the bad press he used to get, instigated by the Labour Party.
If he was indeed backstabbed by his own party members I would feel very sorry for him, but I would have thought that being the kind of man I always believed he was, he would have reacted somewhat differently and come out of it with more dignity.
Let us see more of the pre 2004 John Dalli, please, or is it too late for that?
‘Let us see more of the pre 2004 John Dalli, please, or is it too late for that?’
You mean with VAT increased from 15 to 18%, marking the only time the economy almost ground to a halt under a PN government? If Dalli was faced with the present dire economic global situation what would he have done? Increase it to 21% perhaps? Or more?
To me it just shows that Dalli wasnt even a good minister for the economy. Look at Tonio Fenech today and the way he and the PM handled the present mondial financial crises and you should quickly come to realise that Johnny Dalli, brother of Bastjan, was quickly building his empire in Gaddafi’s Libya while making us all pay a higher VAT rate. He panicked with the very first challenge, imagine what he would have done in today’s turmoil.
Who would be stupid enough to hack into an e-mail using their home IP address?
And it would have to be a home IP address to pinpoint specific people, because if it was done from an office or the PN headquarters for example, their IP address would all be the same because they use the same router.
If I were a hacker, I would use an anonymous router, and there would be no way to find out who it was.
well not exactly. Your ISP assigns you a unique IP address and that is traceable to your account. As a hacker you would use a proxy or anonymous router BUT you still have an IP address on that router and traffic may be traced again, through your ISP, to your account.
There are ways to do this undeterred – an Internet cafe is one or using someone else’s computer.
In PN HQ, they would not have identical IPs (impossible) – they’d have a class of IPs and a specific computer address tied to an IP – fully traceable. I think Johnny Dalli is as disgruntled as the other renegades.
Why all the upper-case letters?
[Daphne – To drive home a point. Sometimes, nothing else works. Thank your lucky stars I didn’t also put the upper case letters in bold.]
Hurts the eyes.
[Daphne – Well, in that case, you know what to od, don’t you.]
Go to Franco Mercieca.
It follows that the police must ask John Dalli how he managed to get names linked to IPs, i.e. if he really has them.
Did you ever consider the fact that John Dalli still has ‘ears’ in the Stamperija?
[Daphne – Oh, so that’s where he left them.]
Oh yes, I suppose that an alleged hacker boasts about what he does over coffee in the canteen at Pieta.
I think we have to put his behaviour into the context of his being an EU Commissioner. The hacking of an EU Commissioner’s email account should be news in Brussels, and more pertinently, reported to the police in Brussels.
Here we have an EU Commissioner who flew to Malta to report that his email account was hacked. Totally strange and out of order.
The Times is far more interested in how and why an Arriva bendy bus has crashed, or stopped due to engine problems.
That newspaper seems to have no idea of its readership, or its responsibilities towards that readership. It must guage its readership through its online comments-board, and operate accordingly.
If this is the low standard it thinks its readers demand in general, then that is insulting.
Well show your disgust and stop buying it.
I did that a long time ago.
Imma l-akkuza hija ‘hacking of his email account’ u mhux semplici tibghat kumment fuq blog. Nahseb li hemm differenza. Ma nafx!
[Daphne – L-injoranza li hawn fil-pajjiz twahhaxni. Erga aqra l-artiklu tieghi.]
You can check the IP number of every email address you receive by clicking on properties. So if Mr. John Dalli received an email from Mr. XY in the past originating from a particular ip address, and he receives an anonymous email from the same IP a year later, one can have a reasonably accurate suspicion that it’s the same person.
Obviously prosecution is still practically impossible especially if IP is from a place of work, internet cafe or political headquarters.
[Daphne – We are not talking about email addresses or anonymous emails. We are talking about hacking – an entirely different kettle of fish. Hackers break into your account. They do not send you insults by email.]
IPs change anyway. You have to pay extra to get a fixed IP address. And an IP identifies a network, not a device.
This is end-game season at its best. The orchestra has now come out in its full compliment, including the maestro.
The maestro who lost to Lawrence Gonzi in 2004 and simply cannot fathom it, to this day.
The maestro who hoped for Lawrence Gonzi to lose the 2008 election so he’ll have another go at the post.
After the formidable, historic and rather unexpected PN victory that year, Dalli searched for, and found, a number of whiners within the party to form his orchestra.
It was formed by some whiners who lost their ministerial jobs, and some wannabees who pretended to be given a ministerial job. The orchestra started playing almost right from the start of this legislature.
Some members, quietly and perhaps wisely, abandoned the group when it became obvious that their leader had one, and only one aim. To topple Gonzi from the helm.
Time went on and it was running out. In the meantime, the maestro made yet one more blunder, coming out with the same line of thought as Labour’s during the Libya conflict.
The musicians became a daily feature on Super One and filled most of Labour’s news bullettins months on end, to this very day.
Now Dalli and his orchestra can take it no more. They’re all out, playing to their highest volume, to ensure they cut short Lawrence Gonzi’s term as PM during this term.
Leaving no stone unturned, they bring up one unconnected subject to another on a daily basis. For what has Dalli’s hacking allegation got to do with JPOS’ futile effort to expel Richard Cachia Caruana? Is Dalli implying that Cachia Caruana is the one who allegedly ‘hacked’ his email account?
Is this the level of desperation in Dalli’s orchestra?
See, the orchestra has tried everything possible, including practically merging with Joseph’s Labour, but Gonzi remained at the helm and now they simply cant take it any longer.
The orchestra is now at its loudest.
And if readers here want to know why The Times is in sync with the orchestra, one only has to ask who in PN runs the paper and who is vying for the post of PN leader in a quiet, systematic, focussed and undermining way.
No need to look further than observing that the man’s pictures are as good as those that The Times features of Joseph. If you havent got it by now, what can I say?
It’s said that ‘success breeds success’ which is only partially true.
Success also breeds envy in others. In this case envy has reached a point of the envious singly loudly to the orchestra’s tune ‘If it’s Gonzi, Go Get Him’.
Quite frankly one must wonder whether he even has any IP addresses.
It’s not like one receives an email saying “your account has been hacked by 213.999.999.999” after each attempt.
Although there would/should be records on the server of every access or attempt, nevertheless it would take a server admin to access these records.
The rest of what you say is of course 100% – well – 95% – you can’t choose your IP – it is assigned by your ISP.
[Daphne – I never said we can choose our IP. I know perfectly well that one can’t. Bear in mind that I actually administer this website, so don’t exactly have a layman’s opinion, like Mr Dalli. You’re right, I should have mentioned the point you made here. I have also remembered another point: that the IPs of large organisations are usually registered publicly in their own name. I don’t know if the Nationalist Party’s is. This means that there is a single IP for the entire organisation: the whole of MITTS (government) has one IP for thousands of employees. So one imagines that if John Dalli had the publicly registered IP for the Nationalist Party, he would have given a press conference about it.]
You can only use a proxy server to connect to mail, or a website, to hide your true IP from that mail account server or site you wish to access anonymously – but even then, the proxy inevitably has a record of the genuine IP you used to access IT, and hence all you have done is erected a screen which CAN be taken down.
[Daphne – Yes, correct. But then it is virtually impossible for even the police to obtain the real IP through the proxy, because of issues with permission and data protection. There is no way on earth you are going to get permission when the proxy is registered in the US, for instance, unless the crime is extremely seriously like terrorism.]
Or to put it differently you have sent John to do dirty business in your name but John knows that you sent him and if pushed he will reveal this information.
I use a vpn service to access UK television online.
The service I use has vpn servers all over the world. When I use the vpn, my IP appears to be in that country I am logging in to.
I believe several users are given the same IP address. Totally untraceable. Any hacker worth his salt could use a vpn within a vpn and become so invisible it’s untrue.
Daphne – there you go – I remember John Dalli on Super one speaking of ‘political terrorism’. So there’s the crux.
“[Daphne – I never said we can choose our IP. I know perfectly well that one can’t.]”
Not always, for 99% of the cases, that’s correct.
John Dalli going to the police with the names of the supposed hackers reminded me of Anglu Farrugia also going to the police with “hundreds” of names involved in vote-selling.
Lawrence Gonzi is a computer geek and I just wonder if Dalli told him about this hacking business. I would think that the PM would have told him “Don’t be so damn stupid”.
As I am not a fly on the wall at that particular moment, I can safely say it is only a conjuncture.
Does not the IP change too when one posts from a site where there is free wi fi or uses someone else’s account anyway?
Didn’t the Great Leader also claim his email was hacked when the RTK emails were published?
So am I missing something? Can’t understand why John Dalli is claiming his email was hacked… Are some interesting emails about to surface?
Xi dwejjaq ta’ nies. One had his email hacked, the other had his phone and wife hacked.
Clearly, Dalli has a personal vendetta against Gonzi. He never misses an opportunity to throw a jab at the PM.
He couldn’t care less about the party. An ungrateful 240,000 euros annual EU commissioner. Why wasn’t he stopped?
After all today Dalli’s support is only in single digits if any.
The delegates wisely chose the right man in 2004.
Another T-shirt slogan:
I’VE COCKED UP
(+ Franco’s face)
Another T-shirt:
SOMEONE’S HACKED MY COCK
(+ Franco’s face)
No. It was me. I am Spartacus.
All your write up is irrelevant.
Dalli reported Blogs not Hacking.
[Daphne – He did not. He said categorically that his email account had been hacked. Read this article, put on line only six hours ago and now mysteriously removed from the online edition though still available when you carry out a specific search for it: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120721/local/John-Dalli-gives-names-of-e-mail-hackers-to-police.429491?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=john-dalli-gives-names-of-e-mail-hackers-to-police-2%5D
Maybe he reported this one, too.
http://john-dalli-eu-cv.blogspot.com/
Silvio, have a look at the time this was published on maltatoday.
And can’t you detect the tone in the article which signifies that it is correcting the impressions given previously?
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/Dalli-reported-blogs-not-hacking-attempt-to-police-20120721
Could it be that you were quoting from a mistaken report by the Times,which has been removed when their attention was drawn to the misreporting?
[Daphne – No. He was all over the news yesterday, not just The Times, claiming that his email account had been hacked and that he had gone to the police. He never mentioned comments or ‘blogs’ as he calls them. The Times wouldn’t remove the story for that reason. They would correct and update it. There is some kind of collusion afoot.]
Why is The Times asking for an election every other day? I hope the PN delegates remember this after the next election when they choose a new leader.
Something out of subject perhaps, but I like this blog for the general knowledge one acquires, be it Maltese, English and now computer hacking etc…and knowledge is wisdom.
I am not very computer-literate but I try to keep abreast of times so thank you for the information shared with us.
Another thing, I find it better than all newspapers and blogs put together, so once again thanks.
Having read the bulk of the comments about John Dalli’s claims,to me it seems quite odd and too many coincidences occur when he brings up a claim in his support.
Let’s hope this is not another mystery which he intends to use to protest his innocence.
How come, may I ask, he arrived from Brussels a day after JPO resigned from the PN? was he waiting for this action for him to make such a ridiculous claim?
When one reaches his age, I suggest that he should be asked by the PM to hand in his resignation from the EU Commissioner post and go back to Libya and carry on with his successful business.
Ghandi kull rispett ghal John Dalli meta kien ghadu ma’ kkontestax il-leadership tal-PN.
Mindu tilef dik il-battlja John qisu qatt ma ried inizzilha it-telfa, u naf x’qed nghid, ghax anke nies fic-cirku intern tieghu kienu qalulu biex jinsa.
Jien ghadni niftakru jghid fil-kampanja tal-leadership li hu “bulldozer mhux bhal haddiehor”.
Ghalija dan il-kumment kien baqa’ jidwi f’widnejja u hasadni ghaliex ma kont nistenna qatt li kellu jinghad minn Dalli.
Imbaghad smajna hafna qlajjiet biex jiggustifikaw ghaliex li stramaggoranza tad-delegati warrbu l-kandidatura ta’ John, fosthom li Gonzi kien ghamel kampanja kontra tieghu u li ma kien veru xejn.
Ghalija minn dak iz-zmien beda l-inkwiet li mbaghad kompla mar-rizenja tieghu minn ministru fuq il-kaz tar-rapport ta’ Joe Zahra.
Pero’ bhala cittadin jien inhoss li l-PM agixxa dejjem b’mod korrett fil-konfront ta’ Dalli, tant li meta ismu gie klerjat, hu rega’ nghata ministeru li kien importanti hafna, dak ta’ l-Affarijiet Barranin.
Allura ghaliex John Dalli se jibqa’ sejjer biha din, u jissuspetta f’kollox u f’kulhadd fil-PN, minbarra f’JPO, Franco u Mulliett, li bhalu halfu li jaghmlu l-bsaten fir-roti lil Gonzi?
Naturalment kulhadd jaf li Dalli ghadu nteressat li jerga’ johrog ghal-leadership tal-PN minflok jahseb biex jirtira’ bil-pensjoni. Pero’ jekk se jibqa’ ffissat daqshekk li kulhadd fil-PN qed jaghmel il-konfoffi kontra tieghu ninsab cert li l-hsara mhux lil Gonzi jaghmilha imma lilu nniffsu.
Kieku kellu daqsxejn melh f’mohhu messu ilu li nduna. Donnu jippretendi li jzomm l-istess post li kellu fi zmien Fenech Adami.
Din li joqghod isemmi kemm ghandu korrispondenza u ma’ jsemmix ismijiet dejqet lil kulhadd. Jew johrog ghonqu, jew joqghod jissupervja li johorgulu b’xi wahd’ohra.
Minn banda ma’ nlumux. Imma kif qed jhewden hu, wahda tibqa’ iggib ‘il ohra, u qatt mhu ser jirnexxielu johrog minnha.
Irid jifhem li b’huh ma’ setghax ikun kap tal-partit. U din tas-Sargas kompliet ghaxxqet id-dinja, kemm hasibna fidili?
Now for those who read the latest news in another section of the media, John Dalli has changed his version and said that he gave names of those who wrote in blogs (meaning not actual blogs like this one, but comments posted by readers of sites) against him, far from e-mail hacking.
Now this is very interesting because either Mr Dalli doesn’t know the difference between hacking and writing an online comment (which I doubt) or else he realised the gaffe he made when he somehow obtained information which falls under Data Protection.
This is serious indeed because no one, except the police (for criminal investigation) may obtain such information.
Mr Dalli has the duty to clarify the matter and explain his actions further, not only to the Maltese but also to all European citizens because he is a Commissioner of the EU.
And no European citizen is going to accept the fact that an EU Commissioner doesn’t know the difference between hacking and online commenting, let alone obtaining sensitive data which falls under data protection laws.
Daphne, this proves how right you are. The Times also reported the PM as having said on Radio 101:
“Dr Gonzi also referred to his meeting with EU Commissioner John Dalli and stated he trusted the Commissioner of Police blindly to investigate the names of alleged hackers passed on to him but he wanted the result of that investigation to be made public.”
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120721/local/no-luxury-to-concentrate-just-on-internal-matters-pm.429511
The PM would not have mentioned hacking of emails unless Dalli actually reported it to the police.
I think that Dalli has realised he made a big mistake and he is trying to patch it up.
However, this is serious.
He has to explain how he got the names linked to IP numbers, if he did so at all, because as you said, this is an offence. This is not the end of the story.