The title of the post says it all: Dhiraagu has ended their brief stint with censorship of pornographic websites. I raised alarm in a previous blog post (refer to it for more details) at the possible onset of filtering and censorship of the internet in Maldives after a friend reported being redirected to the Dhivehinet website upon access to his favourite "wank-off" sites.

The sudden enforcement and removal of the censorship does support the suggestion mentioned in my original post that it might have been the result of a temporary technical arrangement during some maintenance works. But then again, one might wonder if it had anything to do with the efforts by the Islamic Democratic Party, who has declared of its intention to get Maldivian ISPs to block all access to ????????(nude) websites. Their campaign could prove successful soon since porn sites are generally seen to be inexplicably despicable by many and tend to be the first to fall prey to censoring upon pressure from people who find the material offensive.

Whatever the cause of the Dhiraagu porn censorship for the past few days, my concerns remain over the possible application and extension of such censorship to entire classes of other material (specially academic material) which certain groups of people may find objectionable. Hopefully, our internet will remain free from intellectual censorship and each threat that attempt to undermine the sanctity of such freedom will be challenged and neutralised quickly...

It seems that Dhiraagu, the "largest" ISP in the Maldives, has begun to enforce censorship on pornographic websites. Random checks so far indicate that this is in effect for all forms of internet access via Dhiraagu. This block, which began a few days ago, is quite monumental given that so far no ISP in the Maldives has been known to enforce any form of content filtering or censorship other than site-specific access bans on a handful of political websites critical of the current government and its leaders.

Maldives, which officially lauds itself as a 100% Muslim country, has maintained strict bans on import of any sort of pornographic material into the country and enforces it through screening at the Male' International Airport, checks aboard marine vessels and via inspections at the Post Office. The ban does extend to the digital world and there has been atleast one person who has been prosecuted for the access and possession of digital porn. However, the enforcement component of this law does not seem to have been mandated to the ISPs operating in the country as such material has typically been freely accessible. Also, interestingly, partial proxy logs has previously suggested that as high as 70% of internet data flowing in the country may constitute of such material at times.

To me, this is a sudden interesting twist in the story of the Internet in the Maldives and one that needs to be monitored and debated. Internet has been the last remaining oasis of freedom of speech and expression in the Maldives with users expressing themselves unbound, taking part in unhindered debates and engaging in other activities that would typically land serious jail time if done in the “real” world. Internet has also been the only avenue for people to get access to a wide variety of intellectual material - stuff that typically are beyond easy access because of the poor state of our libraries and bookshops and stuff that are beyond access due to strict import laws. If this porn censorship signals the beginning of a wider campaign to block particular content then the freedom that most internet lovers has enjoyed so far may about to be hurled into oblivion.

However, these might be purely paranoid postulations on my part (and I so hope they are!), especially given that Dhiraagu has made no statement about such actions added to the fact that the service from other ISP, Focus Infocom, seems to not have followed suit. A friend at Dhiraagu has suggested that this ban be not official but rather have to do with a mere (temporary) technical re-routing of data through proxies typically intended for use on special connections provided to educational institutions which do carry content filtering for "inappropriate" material.

I might not be arsed enough to object to porn filtering but any more filtering and censorship than that and I object to it entirely – an objection that includes the current access bans on select political sites. Censorship on intellectual material bothers me enough to voice concern even if there is just the mere possibility of it...

PS: Here is a non-exhaustive, extremely tiny list of some of the explicit sites being blocked by Dhiraagu. It was created by an automatic crawler that I wrote to check sites for proxy-based censorship. The list is not meant for anything other than your amusement

Dhiraagu Wifi hotspot is something I had mentioned in an earlier post, however, I hadn't got a chance to experience the service on my laptop till recently. The opportunity popped up when my flight to UK got delayed and had to kill some time at the food outlet at the airport. My laptop readily found the "Dhiraagu Wireless Hotspot" SSID and a stable connection was established. The service was quite decent and I could browse and download in comfort and with speed. It certainly was a luxury that quite a few people would happily pay for.

As ever, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to peek a look at how the service was operating. Access controlled wifi hotspots usually operate by allowing unprotected (that is WEP/WPA free) access to the wireless network and then authenticating the client with a central access controller. The client needs to open a web page, any page, upon which the browser gets redirected to a service login page where the user is prompted to enter the login details that grant them access to the internet thereafter. The login mechanism also serves as a means to facilitate billing.

The Dhiraagu system operates in a similar manner. Below is the screen that we are shown upon connecting. Notice that they are giving the username/password to login with in the current free access promotion they are running.



The browser flickers as the system guides it through a series of links to complete the authentication. Looking at the URLs that the browser hit through, I picked one "interesting" looking IP...

http://202.1.201.230:8002/Portal?NMIP=203.104.25.251?OS=http://www.msn.com/

And voila comes the web administration interface for a Cisco router - the equipment that Dhiraagu is using to provide the Wifi hotspot service!



The router apparently is configured without any administration password and the act of going to the router's IP address provided unfettered access to the wifi router and hence control over the wifi hotspot service.



I wonder if this is true for all the rest of Dhiraagu hotspots splattered across Male'. The service is great, BUT is this how the system was deployed? This configuration of the wifi hotspot lets anyone command control over the router and facilitates all kinds of mischief!

Dhiraagu is currently running a promotion to mark the rollout of their new wifi hotspots around Male'. The hotspots, which are setup in some of the popular cafe's and restaurants, lets customers at these joints enjoy speedy access to internet via laptops, pocket pc's and smartphones. Access is to be granted with the purchase of vouchers but I am not sure if the access offered is time based or data transfer based. However, it would probably be a safe bet that it would not be cheap.

The great thing about this wifi promotion is that they are giving FREE access for the duration of the promotion. That means people in the vicinity of the hotspots can get high speed free internet! The signal is strong and easy to catch atleast around the block and recievable even further off if a wifi antenna is used to boost the signal reception. If you are really desperate for internet and want to cash in on this opportunity, quickly slap up a bi-quad or cantenna for 2.4Ghz use, connect to your wifi card and surf away. Making an antenna certainly makes for an interesting project to while away the afternoon and access to such a antenna has the additional benefit of letting you connect to one of the numerous (unprotected) wifi networks around.

Stay connected!

Ah. Data back up disks are always nice - especially those with older snaps of work. You find things that you've totally forgotten about. Perhaps it is a photo, a document or maybe that song you used to play all the freaking time. As for me, I just stumbled across a hasty log and an interesting screenshot I had taken around mid 2005.

There is a litter of articles dedicated to Dhiraagu on my blog - there is one about their E-Bill system, another on the WWW proxy server and yet another on their WebSMS service. However, the Dhiraagu MMS service, which I recall as being officially launched in July 05, is something I haven't posted about. But now that I chanced upon this "ancient" screenshot and given that Dhiraagu has revamped their MMS website, I thought I'd share...

The screenshot shows the Dhiraagu MMS internet portal that is intended to be used to retrieve recieved MMS and to acquire MMS content for the phone. The shot shows an SQL injection probe on their website and listed by the system as response is a list of database tables - a couple with interesting names. I leave to your imagination what they contain, for I don't remember going pursuing any further on the matter Note that Dhiraagu seems to have re-programmed their MMS service sometime late last year and I have no idea whether the lapses that gave rise to this exploit exist on the new website.