Bonum Certa Men Certa

Security Advisory: Debian falls for social engineering hacks

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 08, 2024,
updated Nov 08, 2024

Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.

As an expert on online privacy and information security, people regularly ask me questions about whether open source is really safer or could there be any such thing as perfect security online.

The phenomena of Code of Conduct gaslighting is not about ethical standards at all, it is really a form of social engineering. The rights of co-authors are similar to the rights of shareholders. Joint authorship is nothing like membership or employment. Co-authors can not give each other orders or exclude each other from recognition. The people trying to conjure up fantasies about expulsion, which doesn't exist under copyright law, are actually engaging in a social engineering attack on our authorship rights.

I began to learn about the JuristGate scandal on 14 April 2023. That is when one of the founders, Mathieu Parreaux, asked me to buy another insurance from his new company.

It became clear to me that the unsafe nature of this insurance product had been known for some time in the Swiss legal profession and most likely in the Swiss insurance regulator too. The fact that it had taken these organisations so long to act and the fact that even when they did act, Mathieu Parreaux could still steal their thunder and ask customers to pay in another year of premiums weeks before we received any official notice from regulators suggests that the regulators don't have the means to protect small business and consumers from this type of conduct.

The FINMA records show us that they made the decision to liquidate the rogue firm on 4 April 2023.

Here is Parreaux asking people to pay the next premiums to a new company (nouvelle structure). It is sent on 14 April 2023, that is 10 days after FINMA decided to shut him down. Customers never received any warning from FINMA before Parreaux sent these messages:

 
Subject:        Fermeture de Justicia SA - Organisation de notre nouvelle structure
Date:   Fri, 14 Apr 2023 16:53:18 +0200
From:   m.parreaux@justiva.ch
To:     m.parreaux@justiva.ch

Chers tous,
...

The liquidator, Walder Wyss, only sent the first warning to customers five days later on 19 April and it has very little detail:

Subject:        Justicia SA en liquidation
Date:   Wed, 19 Apr 2023 13:18:07 +0200
From:   Walder Wyss SA <newsletter@walderwyss.info>
Reply-To:       newsletter@walderwyss.info

WalderWyss Newsletter L'e-mail ne s'affiche pas correctement? Veuillez cliquer ici. <https://news-cdn.walderwyss.com/go/dv35o6fv7g1oafuax2pklhb1r61vozjsizhk4c0go1l5/1032> Walder Wyss Ltd.
Justicia SA en liquidation
walderwyss avocats <https://news-cdn.walderwyss.com/go/c8f5o6fv7g1af46a0u16f1fbx6cosxt9tffwogs441lc/1032>
*Madame, Monsieur,
*
*Par décision de l'Autorité fédérale de surveillance des marchés financiers FINMA du 4 avril 2023, Justicia SA a été exhortée de cesser ses activités, dissoute et mise en liquidation. L’Etude Walder Wyss SA a été nommée en qualité de liquidateur de Justicia SA en liquidation.*

On 5 September 2023, an order was submitted to rename the Swiss corporate entity to Open Source Developer Freedoms SA.

All companies eventually go into liquidation. For example, even if a company is bought by another company, the assets of one company are often transferred to the other company and the company without any remaining assets is technically liquidated.

Therefore, it is reasonable to suspect that at some point in time, the company name would subsequently add the suffix en liquidation and become something like Open Source Developer Freedoms SA en liquidation.

In January 2024, after I finished the cancelation of the Debian trademark in Switzerland, I then made the decision to order the liquidation of the company in good standing.

Liquidation is a process whereby a company sells its assets, pays outstanding bills and then gives the remaining money back to the shareholders. Some companies do not have sufficient money leftover to pay their debts and these companies choose to declare bankruptcy. Declaring a liquidation is not the same as declaring bankruptcy. When liquidations are reported in the media, they are usually the cases where debts are unpaid and many people have seen the word liquidation and bankruptcy used together in the news. Nonetheless, in many cases, companies proceed with an orderly liquidation and then quietly remove themselves from the corporate register without bankruptcy.

It has always been my intention as administrator that assets would be realized and the company would be dissolved in an orderly manner without bankruptcy. In Switzerland, a company must wait at least 12 months before completing the process.

Nonetheless, at the time I changed the company name, I had a sneaky suspicion that rogue members of Debian may cut-and-paste the full company name into some defamatory statement. In fact, they did exactly that. Therefore, by choosing this particular company name, I was able to put the text string "Open Source Developer Freedoms SA en liquidation" into the Debian.org web site. The string is a strong hint to everybody that freedom is in liquidation. I was able to place this string in the Debian web site without having any access rights to modify the Debian web site.

Therefore, I have proven that the people running Debian today are basically asleep at the wheel, cutting and pasting without thinking about what the words mean.

Far and wide, people suspect that was my intention all along and congratulate me for proving that Debian has become so gullible.

Of course other organizations have also been able to bend Debian to their will. Google is able to push out new versions of Chromium with thousands of lines of code changes and they get accepted into the Debian stable releases with relatively little scrutiny. Google has a lot of insiders in Debian to help achieve that. I was able to land that hint about freedom in liquidation on the Debian web site without help from anybody.

The current Debian Project Leader, Andreas Tille, was elected on Hitler's birthday. The fact that my social engineering hack landed in Debian.org on 6 June, the anniversary of the D-Day landings, was a bonus.

Here it is, Debian, under the influence of a German and Google, has confirmed that our freedoms are in liquidation. Long live freedom.

debian social contract, freedom in liquidation

Who will be next? First they came...

First they came..., Debian, Code of Conduct

Please see the chronological history of how the Debian harassment and abuse culture evolved.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Ron Wyden: Microsoft Should be Held Accountable for Security Breaches (He Has Said This for Years Already, It Never Happens)
Negative media coverage isn't a fine and it does nothing to compensate Microsoft's billions of victims
Disable 'Secure Boot' (If It Lets You)
it doesn't put you in control
Longtime Red Hat Staff: Maybe Just Disable 'Secure Boot'
A refreshing take from Adam Williamson
A Dozen Observations About "UEFI 9/11" Deflections
What we are expected to see, tentatively
The World's Richest Ponzi Scheme (Faking Value Using Net Waste)
The higher they go the harder they fall
We Could Dual-Boot Back in the 1990s, Why Has This Become So Difficult?
And prone to breakage
Slopwatch: Google News is Still Promoting Many Fake Articles About "Linux", in Effect Rewarding Misinformation and Plagiarism
things continue to deteriorate
 
UEFI 9/11 Aftermath - Part I: "I Believe This Affects Thousands of Devices... Because Multiple Devices I Checked, Whether Client or Server [...] Affected."
Most people aren't even aware that this is happening or about to happen
The UEFI 9/11 - Part X - An Outline of the Series About Microsoft Sabotaging GNU/Linux (With Ramifications to Unfold Online in Coming Weeks as People Reboot)
Today is UEFI 9/11 (9/11/2025)
Culture of silence: Ubisoft harassment convictions, Mozilla, Sylvestre Ledru & Debian make no comment
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 11/09/2025: "Hey Hi" Ponzi Schemes at Oracle (Unpaid Contracts) and Cindy Cohn is Leaving the EFF
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/09/2025: Playdate Console, Dichotomy between the Real and the Digital
Links for the day
The Microsoft AstroTurfing and Microsoft-Led Blame-Shifting Tactics Are Ahead of Us
Of course it has nothing to do with security, it's about control, i.e. them controlling everything
Celebrating Assassination is Bad Because It Legitimises Assassination of the People You Like, Too
Condoning or even celebrating political assassinations is bad optics (and taste)
Being Conditioned to Accept Unreliable Computer Systems That Fail With Black Screen of Death (BSoD)
Welcome to 2025
New Series: The Coup Against GNU/Linux Has Begun
today, this year in particular, we shall also focus on Secure Boot, which is sold based on a lie and tortures many computer user
New Paper on "BYOVD, but in firmware. Signed UEFI shells, vulnerable modules offer new paths for Secure Boot bypasses."
One might say digital "security theatre"
Links 11/09/2025: Oracle Layoffs, Drunk Pilots in Japan Airlines, US-Korea Tensions Grow
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 10, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 10, 2025
Xubuntu Site Compromised
Let's hope it is not a security breach
Links 10/09/2025: Retaliation at Facebook and Microsoft Reveals Almost 100 Security Holes
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/09/2025: Annihilation of Self, The Future Eaters, and Leaving Academia
Links for the day
They Say That People Are Afraid of or Worried About "Hey Hi", But the Worriers Should be the Fools Who Invested in It
At the end of the day nobody should worry more than those who invested their money in this bubble
Harassment evidence: franceinfo's Clara Lainé report on Ubisoft prosecution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 10/09/2025: Microsoft Layoffs in "RTO" Clothing and Windows TCO, GitHub TCO
Links for the day
Blaming Everything on China
TikTok works for China. GAFAM works for fascists.
People Get Tired of "Hey Hi" (AI), Unlike the Subservient Money-Obsessed Media That Gets Paid to Pretend This Bubble Still Matters
"crash will be way bigger than dot.com burst in 90s. and that was Internet, actually transformative technology, not this expensive AI toy with direct dependency on the energy input which is not scalable"
Brett Wilson LLP Accepts That the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Filed a Case That Also Implicates My Wife (Everything is Connected)
They used to pretend that there were two separate cases
10 Reasons to Disable (or Enable) UEFI Secure Boot
Tomorrow the "trusted corporation" Microsoft will see a certificate expire
Gemini Links 10/09/2025: Hospital and Large Feeds
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 09, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 09, 2025
The Bluewashing of Red Hat is Being Completed, Many Staff Understand They'll be Made Redundant
Jim AllowHurst (Whitehurst) is meanwhile promoting Microsoft's agenda from within other companies
Throwing Away "Old" Computers (Mozilla and Other Climate Deniers)
Mozilla is not leftist
statCounter Sees GNU/Linux Exceeding 10% in Bulgaria This Month
What can Microsoft still do to stop GNU/Linux?
Dark Patterns
Microsoft saying "security" is like a Convicted Felon in the White House saying "law and order".
It's Almost Fall (Autumn)
To "Facebook prison" you are bound
Bruce Schneier About "Secure Boot"
Bruce Schneier isn't a fan of "Secure Boot"
Links 09/09/2025: Microsoft Mass Layoffs Again and "RTO" (Timed Like It Serves as a Distraction From the Mass Layoffs)
Links for the day
RMS Told Microsoft to Stop 'Secure Boot' (He Even Went There to Say That), But They Didn't Listen
Dr. Stallman (RMS) assumed that speaking to sociopaths would work
What Richard Stallman Told Me About 'Secure' Boot in 2012
"if the user doesn't control the keys, then it's a kind of shackle"
Those Who Helped Microsoft Weaponise "Secure Boot" Against GNU/Linux and BSDs Are Fleeing
Microsofters doing what they do best: they evade accountability
Simple is Better, Simplicity is Power
That is "the advantage of having commodity GNU/Linux systems," an associate notes
Much Ado About Nonsense
Microsoft Lunduke is still all dramatisation and sensationalism
Current Events in France
It needs to dump Microsoft and other GAFAM (US) giants, move to Free software
Further Media Cut-downs
media reporting about the media being cut
Links 09/09/2025: US-Korea Tensions and Meta Whistleblowers
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/09/2025: Moon Eclipse and ROOPHLOCH Reports
Links for the day
Links 09/09/2025: “Torrents of Hate” and Political Crisis in France
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/09/2025: "Dedigitizing" and Forgejo on FreeBSD
Links for the day
Google News (Not Just Google Search) Lets Itself by Gamed by One Slopfarm - to the Point Almost Half of "Linux" News is Bot-Produced Plagiarism (LLM Slop With Slop Images)
That says a lot about what Google thinks of quality, even in Google News
Bill Gates-Funded Media Inadvertently Refutes the Microsoft Lie That in 2025 Microsoft Had Just Two Waves of Layoffs
There were about 12 rounds of layoffs so far in 2025
Official SUSE Blog Still Uses LLM Slop (Bots) to Make Fake Articles (Marketing)
The company is all about sound bites
Companies Realise That Slop Doesn't Work as Advertised, Accordingly Dump It
"Hype dims as a country-wide survey of US corporations shows a sudden drop-off in AI use among firms with more than 250 employees."
Microsoft-Funded Lawsuits Against Critics of UEFI 'Secure Boot'
Remember that no company (or law firm) ever survives collaborations with Microsoft
From theregister.co.uk to theregister.com (US) to The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives) and theregister.ai
The best way to break this racket (or cycle of hype and harm) is to break the chains of funding
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Culture of Censorship Necessitates More Speech
The OSI bans dissent or people who merely point out that the OSI is abusive
How to Reach Us Discreetly (Other Than Encrypted E-mail)
We're still managing to maintain a 100% source protection record. We soon turn 19.
LLMs Are Vastly Worse Than a Waste of Energy and the Externalities Are Huge
Worse than just higher power bills for everybody
LLMs Versus Search (Not Replacing Search But Engaging in DDoS Attacks Against Web Sites That Permit Searching)
The state of the Web isn't just bad; it's utterly terrible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 08, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 08, 2025
It's Only the Second Week of September and Already Two Waves of Layoffs at Microsoft, Slopfarms and Microsoft-Funded Sites Spin It as "AI Investments" Rather Than Commercial Failure
A very large third one expected next week
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IX - Shunning Old Computers (in 2023 the Certificate Was Updated/Overridden, Underlying Aim May Be Herding/Forcing People to Get TPM and Other 'Novel' Restrictions)
the "upgrade treadmill"