Security Advisory: Debian falls for social engineering hacks
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.
Who will be next? First they came...
Please see the chronological history of how the Debian harassment and abuse culture evolved. █