Friday Squid Blogging: The Geopolitics of Eating Squid

New York Times op-ed on the Chinese dominance of the squid industry:

China’s domination in seafood has raised deep concerns among American fishermen, policymakers and human rights activists. They warn that China is expanding its maritime reach in ways that are putting domestic fishermen around the world at a competitive disadvantage, eroding international law governing sea borders and undermining food security, especially in poorer countries that rely heavily on fish for protein. In some parts of the world, frequent illegal incursions by Chinese ships into other nations’ waters are heightening military tensions. American lawmakers are concerned because the United States, locked in a trade war with China, is the world’s largest importer of seafood.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Read my blog posting guidelines here.

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Posted on March 29, 2024 at 5:02 PM • 128 Comments

Comments

vas pup • March 29, 2024 5:37 PM

DocFilm – Cryptocurrencies – The Future of Money?
h ttps://www.dw.com/en/docfilm-cryptocurrencies-the-future-of-money/video-68182783

inothernews • March 29, 2024 5:52 PM

Ross Anderson died yesterday.

I expect Bruce will eulogise him at some point. It’s very sad and shocking news.

Steve • March 29, 2024 7:41 PM

@vas pup: I made it through about five minutes of that DW documentary before falling into an “Art Shot” coma.

nealT • March 29, 2024 7:53 PM

I haven’t found much useful information on that ssh backdoor yet. One page claims “the RSA_public_decrypt function will be redirected”; does this mean that servers with no RSA host key configured are safe from this backdoor? Or that only accounts with an ssh-rsa line in authorized_keys are affected?

I hope we’ll see something done about the mess that is autoconf. The initial report claims “an obfuscated script” will be executed after the configure script, which makes me wonder… how would anyone even know it’s obfuscated? If you’ve ever looked at a configure script, you’ll know what I mean. I opened up GnuPG’s as an example, and my editor shows 18,000 lines—apparently written in a style meant to be executable by 35-year-old shells, often testing for stuff that’s been in the C standard for just as long (literally “checking for ANSI C header files”, “checking for working volatile”, etc.). My general preference is to throw away the shipped configure scripts and re-generate them from configure.ac; but those seem very sensitive to autotools versions, often leading me down a rabbit hole of incomprehensible errors… and it’s still 2,000 lines of a macro-language most people don’t know, referencing macros they don’t know, for reasons obscured by the mists of time. I think we’re all just assuming someone knows how that stuff works.

When it comes to my own projects, a script that runs something like “gcc -DFOO -o PROGRAM *.c” is usually enough. These days, a project has to get pretty large before the performance benefit of partial-recompilation has much value. I can’t imagine xz is large enough; they were probably only using autotools because it’s “expected” (cargo-cult reasoning, and probably implementation too; I expect most people are just copying from a tutorial or an existing project).

MarkH • March 29, 2024 8:24 PM

Ross Anderson did so much for awareness and understanding of practical security challenges, and ways to respond to them.

One of the Best.

Ouch.

xz: upstream repository and the xz tarballs have been backdoored • March 29, 2024 8:38 PM

xz: upstream repository and the xz tarballs have been backdoored

xz-utils are compromised and inject malicious code

= Debian:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2024/msg00057.html
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2024-3094

Debian Security Advisory DSA-5649-1
[SECURITY] [DSA 5649-1] xz-utils security update

Package : xz-utils
CVE ID : CVE-2024-3094

Andres Freund discovered that the upstream source tarballs for xz-utils,
the XZ-format compression utilities, are compromised and inject
malicious code, at build time, into the resulting liblzma5 library.

Right now no Debian stable versions are known to be affected.
Compromised packages were part of the Debian testing, unstable and
experimental distributions, with versions ranging from 5.5.1alpha-0.1
(uploaded on 2024-02-01), up to and including 5.6.1-1. The package has
been reverted to use the upstream 5.4.5 code, which we have versioned
5.6.1+really5.4.5-1.

Users running Debian testing and unstable are urged to update the
xz-utils packages.

For the detailed security status of xz-utils please refer to
its security tracker page at:
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/xz-utils

Further information about Debian Security Advisories, how to apply
these updates to your system and frequently asked questions can be
found at: https://www.debian.org/security/

Mailing list: debian-security-announce@lists.debian.org

######################

= Red Hat:

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/urgent-security-alert-fedora-41-and-rawhide-users

“What distributions are affected by this malicious code?

Current investigation indicates that the packages are only present in Fedora 41 and Fedora Rawhide within the Red Hat community ecosystem.

No versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are affected.

We have reports and evidence of the injections successfully building in xz 5.6.x versions built for Debian unstable (Sid). Other distributions may also be affected. Users of other distributions should consult with their distributors for guidance.”

######################

= OpenWall: (With more details at the openwall link)

https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/03/29/4

“After observing a few odd symptoms around liblzma (part of the xz package)
on Debian sid installations over the last weeks (logins with ssh taking a
lot of CPU, valgrind errors) I figured out the answer:

The upstream xz repository and the xz tarballs have been backdoored.

At first I thought this was a compromise of debian’s package, but it turns out to be upstream.”

Clive Robinson • March 29, 2024 10:25 PM

@ ALL,

Re :

It would appear that, it’s brewing up to be another log4j / logshell ffor the MSM and Politicians to chew on…

I guess this little reminder might be timely,

https://xkcd.com/2347/

It appears the previous maintainer had to drop out back in 2022 due to what sounds like stress, the person who took over apparently slid themselves in back then and became the defacto sole maintainer.

The “supposition currently” is that the current person is employed by a Government Entity as they took two years to slip in the backdoor…

If it is more than knee jerk supposition of the,

“It was the Butler Wot dunit!”

type thinking. It begs the question as to if the previous maintainers decline was “spotted” by a Government Entity or not and if so used.

That is, are certain Governments watching sole developers of “key projects” to spot a way to push them out and replace them with someone more compliant?

If certain politicians pick up on that and do their usual,

“If there’s a wrong way to go, then lets run that way”

Then FOSS etc might find it’s self a thing of the past as it’s developer model gets legislated/regulated out…

Anonymous • March 30, 2024 12:33 AM

RIP Ross, his articles used to be like strong coffee in the morning for me, a good while ago :).

ResearcherZero • March 30, 2024 2:10 AM

“It’s the weirdest thing.” – Because in a quirk of geography and history, Hawaii is not technically covered by the NATO pact.

‘https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/29/us/nato-treaty-hawaii-intl-hnk-ml-dst/index.html

Very early on, NATO leaders realized that the benefits of the alliance extended beyond military security and included economic stability as well.
Virtually all Eastern and Central European countries that joined NATO experienced major gains in GDP per capita as a result of their membership.

NATO also provided its member nations with a status as safe havens in which to invest and with which to trade. This brought broad and deep benefits to member nations, including the US. US exports to new NATO member countries rose from $900 million in 1989 to $9.4 billion in 2016.

Paring back US security arrangements could portend, say the report’s authors, a serious hit to the US economy — “a 50% reduction in security agreements would cause US GDP to fall by as much as $490 billion, about 2% of the U.S. GDP in 2021.”

‘https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/criticism-nato-ignores-its-economic-benefit-us

Clive Robinson • March 30, 2024 2:20 AM

@ ALL,

Re : Death of Ross j. Anderson

Our paths occasionally crossed, mostly by “electronic means” as has been the way society has turned these past three decades.

Ross had a passion for the well being of people against those that would seek to do them harm. Thus had a very real interest in their privacy and security in the changing face of society and economics the technology brought.

From memory our first direct contact was back in the early 1990’s over the use of RF to force free running logic circuits to become synchronised (injection locking). Thus opening a doorway to other attacks on the likes of Smart Cards.

As part of it I pointed out that the use of RF was a two way street, not only injecting signals in but also for pulling them out (which I’d demo’d on pocket gambling machines and electronic wallets). Back then the general assumption was “TEMPEST” was sufficient and if it did not radiate then it was secure. As PC’s were mainly steel boxes with few cables entering or leaving thus approximated faraday shields many thought they were secure.

This was not true as I’d found by independent research that by “illuminating a current carrying conductor” you could get it’s waveform to be carried away by an RF carrier a considerable distance.

As I mentioned to Ross back then the keyboard cable was the easiest cable to attack with RF. It also had the advantage of being at “the users fingertips” input interface. Thus was an especially useful attack vector as it would reveal passwords and other secrets (a fact not lost on later developers of hardware “key-loggers”).

Ross was kind enough to put me in contact with another researcher in Belgium who was investigating injecting pulses of energy into chips via “pico-probe” coils.

Ross had a reputation amongst some of possessing “a sharp tongue” and both a wry and dry sense of humour. The latter I saw pop out from time to time but the sharpness of tongue only on those really deserving of rather more due to the injustices they inflicted on others.

Like many others I always found Ross to be approachable and gentlemanly in a way seldom seen these days, and he would often go out of his way to not just help but inspire people a rare quality the world could do with a lot more of.

Less well known is Ross had an interest in music and actively researched it.

So for Ross,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LMsdssVwwSc

Highland Cathedral played by “The Phantom Piper”[1]

In memoriam Ross, rest in peace.

[1] Is Jane Espie, former “Rock Musician” with amongst others “Celtica” turned to NHS Nurse who I once very much to my surprise bumped into in the recovery room of a hospital where I’d just had people making holes in me for my own good 😉 Like all the other Dr’s, Nurses and NHS staff who have managed to keep me ticking along, I wish them all well.

ResearcherZero • March 30, 2024 2:33 AM

@Clive

analysis so far of impact on sshd

It appears to wait for “RSA_public_decrypt () got plt” to be resolved.
When called for that symbol, the backdoor changes the value of RSA_public_decrypt () got plt to point to its own code.

…during a pubkey login the exploit code is invoked

Still being analyzed.

‘https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2024/q1/268

–

The “enemy”, “hypocrite” and a “global arrogant and colonial power”

The capacity of authoritarian states to manipulate narratives and undermine the authority of western democracies is increasingly emphasized in International Relations research. Far less scrutiny has been paid to the ways in which the media environment creates communication vulnerabilities for these same repressive states.

Trump’s escalatory attack played into the Iranian state narrative that Iran is resisting western ‘imperialism’ and standing up for the oppressed in the world. Iran’s former ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht Ravanchi, described it as ‘an obvious example of state terrorism’. Given that the US has designated Iran as a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’, this was a chance to turn the tables in terms of rhetoric. …When other actors buy into the narratives promoted by a state, the latter’s legitimacy and power are heightened.

We question this idea that authoritarian states are winning the communication battle, demonstrating that they have important vulnerabilities as well.

For commentators such as Lajevardi, Soleimani was no soldier defending the Iranian nation from outside threats; he was a defender of the regime and had been the second most important person involved in internal repression. These commentators denied that the Islamic Republic was acting in the national interest. In their eyes, the regime was only fighting for itself. Lajevardi attacked the idea of ‘national unity’ in the Islamic Republic, instead describing a deep divide between state and society.

‘https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/99/6/2465/7280011

“One can always be sorry for the killing of an individual, but I refer to Khamenei who said that ‘we have never seen anything but good from him’. In reality, the only good he did was for the promotion of the regime and ideology of the Islamic Republic. To Sajjadi who says that millions of people participated in his ceremonies, I ask: were the families of the 1,500 or so people killed in the November protests part of the people you saw [in the funeral], or the 60 million who live in poverty in Iran. Those whom the regime say were ‘led by outside forces’, were they not part of the Iranian nation?” – Hossein Lajevardi, (sociologist) ‘https://t.me/bbcpersian/56261

“This crowd has no political value in my opinion. Hitler also took his crowd to the streets. Mussolini the same. Stalin took his crowds to the streets … We must look for democratic institutions such as elections, political parties and free media to evaluate the freedom of the people.” – Hassan Hashemian, (journalist, Czech Republic) ‘https://t.me/bbcpersian/56280

–

Authoritarian regimes in the 21st century have increasingly turned to using information control rather than kinetic force to respond to threats to their rule. This paper studies an often overlooked type of information control: strategic labeling and public statements by regime sources in response to protests.

Labeling protesters as violent criminals may increase support for repression by signaling that protests are illegitimate and deviant. Regime sources, compared to more independent sources, could increase support for repression even more when paired with such an accusatory label. Accommodative labels should have opposing effects—decreasing support for repression. The findings suggest that negative labels de-legitimize protesters and legitimize repression while the sources matter less in this contentious authoritarian context.

‘https://ash.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/democracy_and_authoritarianism_in_the_21st_century-_a_sketch.pdf

Defending Democracy will be harder than most assume, as political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal, to the exclusion of everyone else.

“We have seen for example, what it looks like in Hungary to have a prime minister who, once he took power, began to subtly and unsubtly alter the political system, to make it very difficult for him to lose another election. And we saw the same thing in Poland. But these things are not always immediately obvious.”

https://news.asu.edu/20201218-global-engagement-democracy-under-siege-author-warns-about-appeal-authoritarianism

ResearcherZero • March 30, 2024 2:44 AM

Top brass admitted that they failed to listen during inquiry. Continue not to listen…

“Consecutive governments have failed for years. They’ve learned nothing — we are going over the same stuff.”

Senator Lambie said a database was needed to track complaints and the ADF and Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) needed to be more accountable. She said rather than try to deal with complaints, most other politicians send people to her office.

‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-12/jacqui-lambie-attacks-defence-top-brass-at-suicide-inquiry/103577070

“They’re not hearing. We’re losing our children because no one is listening.”

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-13/defence-veterans-suicide-royal-commission-nick-kaldas-fears/102851264

[sound of a gunshot rings out] or [perhaps no sound at all – just silence]

–

When Jordan appeared in court last month, the judge was unable to hand down a sentence because despite those 94 days in detention and her 12 years in the care of the state, no-one at court produced an up-to-date psychological assessment of her. Nor could the defence, the prosecution or the representative of the Youth Justice Department — all publicly funded — produce any reports or assessments conducted by any medical or allied health professional.

Asked how it was possible that a child in state care was homeless, how it is that a child in state care has apparently not been assessed, treated or medicated for her disabilities, the Department of Children, Youth Justice and Multicultural Affairs said, “Under the Child Protection Act 1999, we are legally prevented from discussing individual cases”.

‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-01/qld-youth-detention-analysis-crime-justice/102161036

“I argue again and again it is an all-out punitive culture, an entrenched toxicity. It used to be even worse.”

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-19/officer-allegedly-made-ghost-noises-in-cleveland-dodd-cell/103591776

A 25% increase of suicides in the Northern Territory in 2023. And a 200% rise in suicides since the beginning of the century.

The youth suicide rate in the NT is three and a half times the national average.

‘https://parliament.nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/366551/Final_Report_on_Youth_Suicides.pdf

ResearcherZero • March 30, 2024 3:34 AM

Unlike the setuid bit, the setgid bit has effect on both files and directories. Wall messages are often disabled by admins for a very good reason. Old bugs…

‘https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/313549/why-cant-i-send-messages-with-the-wall-command

“The util-linux wall command does not filter escape sequences from command line arguments. This allows unprivileged users to put arbitrary text on other users’ terminals, if mesg is set to “y” and wall is setgid.” On systems that allow wall messages to be sent, an attacker could potentially alter a user’s clipboard through escape sequences on select terminals like Windows Terminal. It does not work on GNOME Terminal. CVE-2024-28085 impacts Ubuntu 22.04 and Debian Bookworm as these two criteria are met.

(you could escalate privileges with a crafted message for example – and do nasty stuff)

Disable ‘setgid’ for wall, or disable wall messages for the user account (mesg n -v).

‘https://github.com/skyler-ferrante/CVE-2024-28085

Clive Robinson • March 30, 2024 4:08 AM

@ ResearcherZero,

“Because in a quirk of geography and history, Hawaii is not technically covered by the NATO pact.”

Have you seen the Hawaiian flag?

It was part of “Great Britain” when it was a monarchy. A bunch of American business men did not like that so tried to cease the nation. And eventually to stop the Americans Hawaii became a republic, but the American business interests finally got their way and the Native Hawaiian’s have suffered under the US since and many want out of it and are fighting for their freedom…

With regards the Unix “Write All” wall() command it’s been a bit of a problem since DEC RS232 terminals of the late 1970’s early 80’s which had programmable function keys…

That is you could run a script that would reprogram the function keys on Dec Terminals to fire up a script that was used for the “SuSh attack”… Thus giving an an attacker later access to a users account and files.

ResearcherZero • March 30, 2024 4:55 AM

@Clive

A popular routine here is the old ‘dismissal on medical grounds’.

“The inquiry into alleged Special Forces’ war crimes in Afghanistan set out to give “blanket exemption” of accountability for the highest levels of the ADF and Defence.”

‘https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/new-report-blows-up-brereton-inquiry-into-alleged-special-forces-war-crimes/news-story/8b89f22cdc680c81fe5caa1e48ca6e13

“The government is no doubt hoping this will all just go away. …There is a culture of cover-up at the highest levels of the Australian Defence Force. It is the ultimate boys’ club.

https://www.themonthly.com.au/the-politics/martin-mckenzie-murray/2023/06/20/sending-out-sas

It found “credible” evidence of allegations that 25 Australian soldiers had murdered 39 Afghan civilians, and pointed to a disturbing “warrior culture” that had developed within elements of the elite Special Air Service Regiment. Prosecutors allege that Schulz, 41, murdered an Afghan man while deployed to Afghanistan with the ADF in an incident unrelated to Roberts-Smith.

The inquiry has found “credible information” that junior soldiers were required by their patrol commanders to shoot a prisoner, in order to achieve the soldier’s first kill, in a practice known as “blooding”. “Throwdowns” — other weapons or radios — would be planted with the body, and a “cover story” was created.

‘https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-reckoning-over-afghanistan-war-crimes-is-only-just-beginning-20230530-p5dciz.html

“some guys went up the Congo, and … yes, [that] could have applied to Mr Roberts-Smith”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/110-days-41-witnesses-and-15-key-questions-to-answer-what-the-ben-roberts-smith-case-was-about-20230209-p5cjdp.html

–

Mercer painted a picture of a combination of offhand arrogance from senior officers and a lack of interest and accountability on the part of ministers.

‘https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/12/britain-war-afghanistan-special-forces-sas-johnny-mercer

Johnny Mercer has until 5 April to provide a witness statement with the names to an independent inquiry. Failure to comply could result in a jail sentence or fine, the MP was told.

The chair of the inquiry, Sir Charles Haddon-Cave, previously told the minister: “You need to decide which side you are really on, Mr Mercer.”

Mr Mercer repeatedly refused to reveal the identities of whistle-blowers who he said had warned him there might be truth to the allegations of extrajudicial killings by special forces. Mr Mercer told the inquiry last month: “The one thing you can hold on to is your integrity and I will be doing that with these individuals.”

The inquiry is investigating whether British special forces killed civilians and unarmed people on night raids in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013.

‘https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68662384

‘https://iiaweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/240313_JM_amended_s.21_Notice-For-publication_Redacted-Annex-A.pdf

JonKnowsNothing • March 30, 2024 12:39 PM

@ResearcherZero, @Clive, All

re: Grab n Take: American business interests finally got their way

A large portion of the USA, west of the Mississippi River, came into US possession the same way. Includes some of the barely known US Territories, Puerto Rico and Cuba (pre-C/post-Gitmo).

We are experts at taking what is not ours, but we get to keep it all the same. We got bigger guns and we know Guns Make Might Is My Right Not Yours .

JonKnowsNothing • March 30, 2024 12:59 PM

@All

A number of MSM reports indicate a fair few number of cities in California are deploying AI License Plate Readers along highways and streets.

The capabilities enabled vary, as do the terms of use

  • Capture LPN
  • Storage 30+ days [a rolling 30 day heat map of individual vehicles]
  • AI recognition of Model, Type, Color, Stickers, Car Marks
  • Tracking transit times, number of trips
  • May include echo based gunshot location-direction systems

Some indicate that these are not directly tied to the existing Traffic Violation Auto-Infraction systems used for red lights, seat belts, speed infractions often mounted at intersections.

Drone Surveillance is coming to San Francisco.

===

HAIL Warning

ht tps://w ww.t heguardian.com/world/2024/mar/29/oakland-surveillance-cameras-freeways-highways

  • California deploys hundreds of freeway surveillance cameras in Oakland

  • California highway patrol (CHP) has contracted with Fl[xxx] Safety, a surveillance technology company, to install 480 cameras that can identify and track vehicles by license plate, type, color and even decals and bumper stickers. The cameras will provide authorities with real-time alerts of suspect vehicles.

  • CEOs of four major employers in downtown Oakland announced plans for a joint $10m security program to improve public safety and protect employees. The companies are Blue Shield of California, Clorox, Kaiser Permanente and Pacific Gas & Electric. [no specifics]

ht tps://www .latimes. com/california/story/2024-03-29/license-plate-readers-and-video-cameras-are-coming-to-orange-to-fight-crime-officials-say

  • License plate readers and video cameras are coming to Orange [City]
  • information on vehicles entering and exiting Orange, which can then be shared with other law enforcement agencies in neighboring cities to catch suspects on the move.
  • 43 license plate readers and 13 video cameras
  • The license plate readers will record the make and color of a vehicle and how many times it has driven past. The information is stored for 30 days.

Clive Robinson • March 30, 2024 1:00 PM

@ Bruce, ALL,

Re : Red Crocus in the wind.

I’ve been mulling over my disquiet with the ISIS-K MSM story on the Moscow “Crocus Expo” center attack as it does not sit well with me.

In fact I’m getting to the point of thinking based on the evidence available that it is in fact a “Red Flag” event, probably faked up by almost state level resources.

First of consider ISIS-K was effectively a “dead organisation” they were taken out to the point of extinction by Afghanistan forces after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. Their sources of finances, arms, and much else had been blocked or stopped and their “safe areas” effectively eliminated.

Without going into too many details the MO of the Moscow Attack was so different to known ISIS-K modalities it was in effect more like a staged theatrical event.

As one example ISIS-K was fundamentalist and as such did not do “strike and run” their MO was “strike and self-immolate”.

That is part of the ISID-K core doctrine was not “live to fight another day” but “Die and rise as a martyr” anything less being unacceptable and what we might view as “consorting with the devil” thus eternal damnation.

When you notice this and examine what little alleged evidence there is you come to realise that there are way to many little things wrong, and that means the most likely thing is,

“It is not supportive evidence of what is claimed”

Which leads on to the question of,

“If it is evidence, what is it evidence of?”

It’s clear that Putin / Russia care not a jot for finding the truth, the event has given them a major “home propaganda” opportunity and they have leapt on it like a rabid dog, thus now will be “stage managing” just about every aspect of it they can to “bolster it up” as it’s an article of faith that “Strong men can not be wrong”. Thus it’s unlikely anything further from Official Russian sources will be of use in an evidentiary way to the actual truth. However unofficial picking at the loose threads usually uncovers the truth hidden beneath which is why we can expect propaganda if not repression to come into play.

We’ve seen this before with stuxnet it was clear at the time North Korea knew enough that they went “public” and aimed a finger at the US. This caused rather more disquiet in the security community than the obviously false original statements and thus started even more people pulling at threads and digging. The US in the face of mounting evidence they could not repress, coming from those AV and other organisations that did not “toe the line” or “act as forty pieces of silver mouth pieces” then tried to stage manage their admission rather than be hit with a tsunami of evidence of what they had been upto.

On balance they “got away with it” as the repercussions have been minimal. In fact the only real harm for the USG was that AV and Similar organisations stopped trotting out the blatant “USG insider” nonsense. Which on balance has been of real benefit for the rest of us, as people are waking up to the implications including that of faux-and stage-managed news from all governments, not just those considered tyrannical, despotic, fascist, etc but even those who claim to be bastions of democracy, truth, morality, etc.

In the past I’ve pointed out how “malware” via APT tactics can turn a single person into an “army of one” and why, and that became more obvious with subsequent events. Well malware is just one very small front on the “information-space battlefield”, and due to the stupidity of “grab it and run” neo-con “short term thinking” we are now in an almost indefensible position without the necessary tools to build defences. The days of wearing red uniforms and marching up the hill with pikes in the face of thousands of archers and the like are long over in military doctrine. It’s well over due to apply the same logic to the information-space battlefield.

Thus the questions,

“Will we?” and “When?”

Arise.

Clive Robinson • March 30, 2024 1:06 PM

@ JonknowsNothing, SoaceLifeForm, ALL,

Note from your and mine post times above we made “coincidental posts”

I got the “too many posts” error message, paused and hit the post button again.

I’m more and more convinced this is caused by a race condition within the blog software stack.

JonKnowsNothing • March 30, 2024 1:19 PM

@ResearcherZero, All

re: when is a child in State Care

In the USA, our obsession with our southern border, and to some extents our northern border, has some interesting OHs??

People crossing our borders fall into a huge bucket of potential definitions, each of which has it’s own list of legal definitions and legal requirements.

A new(to me) version of this dance goes something like this:

Normal:

1, A person crosses the border

2, The person is picked up by any number of US Border Control Agencies

3, The person is allocated to a defined bucket

4, Once a defined bucket as been assigned, they wait in camps for processing

New:

2, The person is not picked up for 6-24hrs after Agencies have been notified. The person often waits at a known Agency collection point, but the Agencies delay pickup. This delays the Tolling Clock (1)

4a, The person is permitted to go “anywhere except further into the USA”; their presence in these holding camps is “voluntary”.

4b, Since the person is under no restraints and their presence in the camps is voluntary, neither the State nor the Federal Governments are responsible for any support, food, shelter, health or medical care.

  • “the child in [not] State Care” and there is no obligation to feed them.

===

1) ht tps:/ /en.w ikipedia.org/wiki/Tolling_(law)

  • Tolling is a legal doctrine that allows for the pausing or delaying of the running of the period of time set forth by a statute of limitations

JonKnowsNothing • March 30, 2024 1:43 PM

@Clive, SpaceLifeForm, ALL

re: “too many posts” error message / caused by a race condition within the blog software stack

I have also recently gotten several “security error” messages on post. I did not capture the messages because I figured they were also a race condition and a resubmit worked.

There is likely at least 2 validations with race conditions:

  • The top of the input form security check
  • The creation of a post timestamp and allocation of storage for the message

Hopefully, there isn’t an MITM diversion happening

JonKnowsNothing • March 30, 2024 2:27 PM

@Clive, All

re: “grab it and run” neo-con “short term thinking” we are now in an almost indefensible position

Consider:

We know the Hayek/Austerity economic model is collapsing. The known points of failure of the model are in evidence. (1) Global economists are not unaware of this pending catastrophe, it’s seen in the bankruptcies of not just cities but entire countries. The collapse is evident in the global panfamine, where commodity traders and hedge funds are buying up vast quantities of food and withholding these from the open markets to force an artificial shortage with increased prices. (cocoa chocolate)

We also know that the uber-oligarchs have been prepping their bugout locations for years. These folks have access to economic advice that ordinary people do not. They also have the funds to create private enclaves with the ability to be self-sustaining for years.

I’ve been considering what happens when the full collapse of the Austerity model hits in a wide swath. We can see parts of it regionally:

  • hunger, lack of paid work, lack of housing, lack of options or opportunities.

Gordon Brown, former PM of UK, who must be on of the last of the old Keynesian model thinkers (rising tides lift all boats) has referred to what is coming as

  • ‘the hungry decade’

As in 10 years … or perhaps more. Economies even in collapse take decades to rebuild; they take moments to collapse directly or indirectly but recovery is a long term effort.

So the question is:

  • What are the oligarchs going to actually do to avoid the collapse themselves while dumping the effects on the world population?

It seems that their direct answer is: global wars

Not nuclear ones, but wide spread enough to affect millions of people who will be affected by wrapping the situation in a bunting of patriotism.

Wars are quite handy for a collapse. Everything does into the fire. There is nothing left from the previous pre-war state. The population willingly signs up for it, and willingly sacrifices all they have for it.

I am reminded of the many post-WW2 years in UK where food shortages remained a common factor. Other countries did away with their artificial food shortages years before the UK relinquished theirs. The deprivations allowed government actions, that today are deplored, but were effective at controlling the population into accepting even more severe limitations.

In a Hollywood movie about GIs in UK during WW2, the GIs send a kid to the fish and chips shop for them. The dialog runs something like this:

PersonA Fish n Chips 1 way (1 order)

PersonB Fish n Chips 2 ways (2 orders)

Kid Fish n Chips 50 ways (order for the platoon)

All the villagers leave as there’s nothing left for them.

===

1) Both the Hayek/Austerity and Keynesian models have collapse or failure points, however they fail at different points.

  • Keynesian fails under hyper inflation (demand without production)
  • Austerity fails when there is nothing left to sell so there is nothing left to take (zero assets)

2)
ht tps://e n.wi kipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_brown

  • James Gordon Brown HonFRSE is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010.

ht tps:/ /ww w.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/27/gordon-brown-calls-for-creation-of-poverty-fund-to-halt-slide-into-hungry-decade

  • emergency plan to halt Britain’s slide into a “hungry decade” of destitution and hardship.

Winter • March 30, 2024 2:59 PM

@JonKnowsNothing

We know the Hayek/Austerity economic model is collapsing.

If there is one thing that the recent pandemic showed it is that nation states can do the “impossible” if they feel like it.

Nations that organized their stuff were able to withstand lockdowns, health emergencies, and supply chain collapse for two years emerging relatively well.

Those that didn’t, saw real hardship and lots of unnecessary deaths.

Winter • March 30, 2024 3:17 PM

Continued (hit submit too soon)

We know the Hayek/Austerity economic model is collapsing.

Note that Global Free Markets were non-functional during the pandemic.

Clive Robinson • March 30, 2024 4:33 PM

@ Winter, JonKnowsKnothing,

Re : Free Markets and the taking hand.

“Note that Global Free Markets were non-functional during the pandemic.

Actually they have never been functional, they have like a puppet only given the illusion of life as long as the strings were being pulled.

We once used to call it,

“The hidden hand of the Market.”

The reality is the only thing “hidden” was what it was doing. So more correctly from the normal perspective it would be,

“The stealing or rapacious hand of the Market.”

But also because the “Free Market” is an entire fiction created to make naked theft by the “self entitled” legal and turn ordinary people back into possession less serfs renting everything to their last penny and beyond, thus we get,

“The lordling hand of the Market”

And it’s authoritarian following guard labour, that knows first hand having “dished it out already” what awaits if,

“They do not do what the Lord Commands.”

At various times in history those that are serfs can take no more and they rise up in civil disobedience, and take the guard labour out of the lordlings control in some way. The result is never pretty, however if luck prevails then the lordlings just get sanctuary in some other place to waste the rest of their lives. But unfortunately as many are aware that this might be their fate they take with them as much of the stolen wealth as they can. Usually by doing it in advance.

For instance it is reputed that “Comrade Putin” has salted away more wealth than all of his crony oligarchs,

This bunch

https://www.businessinsider.com/richest-russian-oligarchs-putin-list-2018-1?op=1#19-mikhail-gutseryev-64-billion-7

Was worth over a quarter of a trillion USD by “confirmed sources” so it probably grew to twice that at least in the years, but in more recent times,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2022/04/07/the-forbes-ultimate-guide-to-russian-oligarchs/

Some have lost a fraction to those outside Russia and Putin is calling in markers to pay for his moronic idealism to have his name go down in history, and be more remembered than Stalin, Hitler, Genghis Khan and others. Hopefully he will be laughed at as “Vlad the failer”.

But remember that list is incomplete and they are just a small number of the reputed 6000 cronies.

vas pup • March 30, 2024 4:37 PM

@Steve: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/03/68676.html/#comment-434486

Sorry to hear this. I have to reload it several times before move to the end. Recently DW even short videos are not working properly because DW somehow start cooperating with Google to collect statistics or even put their videos on Google servers (the latter is like BBC used to say ‘highly likely’).

Moreover, recently DW introduced privacy choice for users but there is actually zero choice. DW set ‘agree’ as default on all cookies even you reject such selection and want set ‘reject all’.

DW videos are really good and I like them on different subjects, but DW IT folks handling their video access totally screw up.

vas pup • March 30, 2024 6:17 PM

Unbreakable Codes
43m | 2023 | TV-PG V | CC

https://play.history.com/shows/the-unxplained/season-6/episode-8

“There’s nothing more fascinating than a code that can’t be cracked. For centuries, mankind has devised ingenious ways to hide valuable information–using everything from enigmatic puzzles, to complex ciphers and secret symbols. If history’s unbreakable codes can be deciphered…could we unlock answers to some of the greatest mysteries of both the past and present?”

Last rerun yesterday – interesting!

ResearcherZero • March 30, 2024 6:25 PM

@JohnKnowsNothing

We are not troubled by a Bill of Rights, or for the responsibilities or care of anyone, including one’s own citizens, and especially not children. The specifics differ from state to state, but basically the government can pick and chose on it’s own whim whom to help.

This can be challenged via the High Court, if you are one of the 3% of applications which is approved to be heard, after making it through all the other legal hurdles. This could take years, perhaps even decades. That is if you manage to survive that long. Some do.

You need to travel to the other side of the country to attend the High Court. The others shut. Probably why we have such high suicide rates. Few services exist outside of cities.

It keeps Undertakers in business and makes time for more frivolous cases like defamation.

–

‘https://time.com/6962075/donald-trump-video-president-biden-tied-up-truck/

“He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.”

‘https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/24/the-snake-how-trump-appropriated-a-radical-black-singers-lyrics-for-refugee-fearmongering/

–

“Mike was seriously misleading our members. …Not one of them had seen the brief.”

‘https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/29/speaker-mike-johnson-dishonest-january-6-brief-liz-cheney-book

Johnson “organized more than 100 House Republicans to sign onto an amicus brief filed in support of a lawsuit from Texas’ Republican Attorney General, Ken Paxton, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate Biden’s wins in four states that gave him his winning margin in the Electoral College — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”

https://apnews.com/article/congress-house-speaker-2024-election-certification-8cd7c5a9e6ae69635bbb4624cc78e5c5

His Republican critics called it a Trojan horse that allowed lawmakers to vote with the president while hiding behind a more defensible case.

‘https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/us/politics/republican-election-objectors.html

“Well I’m surprised that she’s given that criticism because during that process, Liz and I were in constant dialogue about that. And, at one point, she even considered signing on to that bill. I’ll tell you that that is a fact, to that amicus brief,” Johnson said.

(Cheney’s memoir strongly suggests otherwise.)

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4394047-cheney-rejects-johnsons-claim-she-considered-signing-amicus-brief-on-overturning-2020-election/

ResearcherZero • March 30, 2024 6:33 PM

@vas pup

DW are driving traffic away from their site, which is a pity as the videos are good.

I’ve pretty much avoided DW since they changed the website.

–

‘https://blog.fox-it.com/2024/03/28/android-malware-vultur-expands-its-wingspan/

vas pup • March 30, 2024 6:50 PM

@ResearcherZero – what a sh#t!

@ALL on China

European flying car technology sold to China
h ttps://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68669296

“The tech behind a flying car, originally developed and successfully test-flown in Europe, has been bought by a Chinese firm.

Powered by a BMW engine and normal fuel, the AirCar flew for 35 minutes between two Slovakian airports in 2021, using runways for take-off and landing.

It took just over two minutes to transform from a car into an aircraft.

The tech behind a flying car, originally developed and successfully test-flown in Europe, has been bought by a Chinese firm.

Powered by a BMW engine and normal fuel, the AirCar flew for 35 minutes between two Slovakian airports in 2021, using runways for take-off and landing.

It took just over two minutes to transform from a car into an aircraft.

Now vehicles made based on its design will be used within a “specific geographical region” of China.

Hebei Jianxin Flying Car Technology Company, headquartered in Cangzhou, has
purchased exclusive rights to manufacture and use AirCar aircraft inside an
undisclosed area.

The firm has built its own airport and flight school after a previous
acquisition from another Slovak aircraft manufacturer, said Anton Zajac, cofounder of KleinVision, the company which created AirCar.

Having led the way in the development of the EV revolution, China is now actively developing flying transport solutions.

Last month a firm called Autoflight carried out a test flight of a passenger-
carrying drone between the cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai. The journey, which
takes three hours by car, was completed in 20 minutes, it said – although the aircraft contained no passengers.

And in 2023 the Chinese firm eHang was awarded a safety certificate by Chinese
officials for its electric flying taxi. Here, the UK government has said flying
taxis could become a regular feature of the skies by 2028.

But unlike these drone-like passenger aircrafts, AirCar does not take off and
land vertically, and requires a runway.

KleinVision declined to say how much it had sold the technology for. AirCar was
issued with a certificate of airworthiness by the Slovak Transport Authority in 2022 and featured in a video published by YouTuber Mr Beast earlier this year.”

=======

Xiaomi: Chinese smartphone giant takes on Tesla
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68672192

“Mr Lei also said the SU7, which has drawn comparisons with Porsche’s Taycan and Panamera models, would have a minimum range of 700km (435 miles), beating
the Tesla Model 3’s 567km.

The firm is hoping that the SU7’s shared operating system with its phones,
laptops and other devices will appeal to existing customers.

Xiaomi is the third-largest seller of smartphones worldwide with a market share of about 12%, according to research firm Counterpoint. Xiaomi has said it will invest $10bn in its vehicles business over the next 10 years.

“The Chinese EV market is very mature and creates a very stable ecosystem for the EV manufacturers,” said Abhishek Murali from research firm Rystad Energy.

“For example, the battery supply chain is very strong, and the charging network in the country is also growing to meet the growing EV feed.”

Tesla, which is headed by multi-billionaire Elon Musk, has cut the cost of its cars in China by thousands of dollars in recent months as local rivals like the
world’s top-selling EV maker BYD have slashed prices.

The world’s biggest car market is already crowded so Xiaomi is one of the few new prospective entrants to gain approval from authorities as officials try to curb a flood of new players.

Earlier this week, BYD posted record annual profits but said growth had slowed
towards the end of last year.”

lurker • March 30, 2024 7:55 PM

@vas pup, @ALL

a passenger-carrying drone between the cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai. The journey, which takes three hours by car, was completed in 20 minutes,

datapoint: The Shenzhen – Zhuhai journey is a hot topic in China, and especially in the “Greater Bay Area.” The bay is 50km across Hongkong – Macao, and 100km deep from ocean to tidal limit at Guangzhou. Three hours refers to the journey time staying within PRC. The new Hongkong-Macao bridge reduces that to less than 90 minutes, most taken up negotiating the streetscape around the China-Hongkong border. There are “fast” ferries that run Shenzhen-Zhuhai in 60 minutes jetty to jetty. The drone flightpath would be mostly across seawater, and would have to rely on the port authority tracking for SAR purposes.

lurker • March 30, 2024 8:08 PM

@ALL
“too many posts …”

I submit “contact bounce” on touchscreens as a probable cause. @Clive could probably define and describe this better than me, but I have seen error behaviour in other offline apps that would follow from contact bounce. This can vary with finger condition too, wet – dry, hot – cold, …

ResearcherZero • March 30, 2024 8:14 PM

@vas pup

Australia is waking up to the fact it needs to look at it’s supply chain…

More than 3.7 million Australian homes have installed rooftop solar – the highest uptake rate in the world. But only about 1% of those panels are locally manufactured, with Adelaide-based Tindo Solar being the only homegrown solar panel manufacturer.

“ARENA will look at the entire supply chain from ingots and wafers to cells, module assembly and related components, including solar glass, inverters, advanced deployment technology and solar innovation.”

‘https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/03/28/australia-announces-pit-to-panel-solar-manufacturing-program/

State government clearing the way to fast-track production.
https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2024/03/25/state-smooths-way-for-quinbrook-polysilicon-plant-plans/

New steel pellets could be processed in furnaces that use hydrogen.

‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-24/gfg-alliance-says-green-steel-production-a-step-closer/101368634

160-tonne electric arc furnace would lift steel making capacity at the Whyalla plant from 1 million tonnes annually to about 1.5 million tonnes.

https://www.afr.com/companies/manufacturing/sanjeev-gupta-in-500m-push-to-make-whyalla-steelworks-greener-20230403-p5cxm8

–

“Artificial intelligence helps us in two ways. One is mapping, and the other is genetic studies focusing on kelps’ tolerance to warm water.”

It is estimated that 95% of Australian kelp forests have died due to ocean warming. The loss of the dense canopy-forming giant kelp forests along Tasmania’s coastline has devastated the dense, sheltered habitat they created for a wide range of fish and invertebrates, including commercially valuable species such as abalone and lobster.

‘https://www.csiro.au/en/news/All/News/2024/February/National-collaboration-to-save-Australias-invisible-endangered-forest-of-giant-kelp-using-AI

Kelp also act as the trophic foundation of coastal food-webs by providing food for a suite of grazers, detritivores, and microbes – the effects of which can reach to adjacent reef, seagrass, and sediment communities, as well as to deep waters and beyond the continental shelf.

This plant community serves as an underwater forest, providing habitat for thousands of marine creatures ranging from small penguins to leafy sea dragons.

‘https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.00074/full

ResearcherZero • March 30, 2024 8:24 PM

@lurker

I’m much more fond of the old keyboard. Touch technology has a few issues to be resolved.

They are turning off the old network so I have to get a new phone. But first I have to hack it, modify it, and install proper things like a firewall and other such necessities.

Then it will sit there, get dusty and I’ll probably never use it except to update it.

ResearcherZero • March 30, 2024 9:44 PM

@Clive

Re: backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to ssh

This is pretty gnarly…

analysis of the bash obfuscation part of the backdoor

‘https://gynvael.coldwind.pl/?lang=en&id=782

The hooked RSA_public_decrypt verifies a signature on the server’s host key by a fixed Ed448 key, and then passes a payload to system(). It’s RCE, not auth bypass, and gated/unreplayable.

The payload is extracted from the N value (the public key) passed to RSA_public_decrypt, checked against a simple fingerprint, and decrypted with a fixed ChaCha20 key before the Ed448 signature verification.

‘https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/03/30/36

Clive Robinson • March 31, 2024 1:12 AM

@ ResearcherZero,

Re : Backdoor in xz/liblzma

This is pretty gnarly…

To gnarly for my tired brain, it’s past 6AM here and for entirely unrelated reasons I’ve been “boiling my mind” on other things since before the first post on .xz popped up[1], and as the old say has it “I ain’t as young as I used to be, when old dragons were named “mad maggie”.

Thus when I glanced at the bash script and saw “tr” my brain just said to me “it’s just under twenty years since you last used it!”…

Which gave me the feeling that the choice of the way things have been done and the commands being used was deliberate to rule out most keyboard jocks under the age of ~forty years.

Even the encipher stuff is long in the tooth after all when did “Ron’s Cipher 4″(RC4) get chucked on the scrap heap?

So my brain has done a “Zebedee” and said “Boing time for bed”[2]

[1] Remember folks it’s the Easter Weekend and not everyone is “at their keyboard” some actually have families they have to interact with…

[2] It’s the catch phrase for a stop motion puppet made of a toilet roll center mounted on a spring… From the children’s TV Show “Magic Roundabout” that was so full of rude innuendo it’s amazing that they got away with it…

SpaceLifeForm • March 31, 2024 3:09 AM

Re: XZ backdoor

Here is a good collection of links currently

‘https://shellsharks.com/xz-compromise-link-roundup

ResearcherZero • March 31, 2024 3:51 AM

@SpaceLifeForm

Thanks

@Clive

There are plenty of false flags and other suspicious contact details to try and throw people off the trail or mislead. A lot of work went into setting up and planning.

I got up at 3AM. I try to avoid my family for the holiday breaks. Not always possible.

List of platforms affected (including VMs)

‘https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/threat-brief-xz-utils-cve-2024-3094/

Winter • March 31, 2024 6:40 AM

Re: backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to ssh

This is pretty gnarly…

The obfuscation looks very effective. There is no code stored in plaintext. The decoding is done using innocent looking simple bash commands that cut, paste, and substitute bytes and do XOR in awk, which does not have bitwise operators. The convoluted command chains take some time to disentangle which hides their true purpose.

I think a large number of maintainers and distributers are combing through projects to see whether they can find other instances of this type of backdoor.

I would start with a grep on tr-commands, just to get the low hanging fruit.

Clive Robinson • March 31, 2024 8:41 AM

@ ResearcherZero, SpaceLifeForm, Winter, ALL,

The body has creaked it’s way back into the world of the living, but the brain is still feeling like it’s still eight time zones behind…

However I’ve been thinking some more on the use of old *nix commands like ‘tr’ for doing crypto. The likes of ‘sed’ obviously spring to mind and the command line invocations can look very similar.

The trick in the long run though will be making the “encrypted file” look like it’s not just “printable” but “sensible” plaintext as well as not holding the whole attack.

The use of XOR or ADD on bytes just does not do that but a semi randomised substitution code of words can do it.

In effect the simple substitution “the code alphabet” becomes words so “apple = banana”, “cat = dog” and so on. To step it up you can use more than one substitution thus “cat = {dog, rat, pig, pug}” thus an RNG produces two random bits for encryption to make the selection and decryption works by the simple fact that any occurrence of dog / rat / pig / pug becomes cat. The only real requirement is that all the encode words are unique in the substitution dictionary.

The thing is that you don’t have to use an RNG but some other generator based on statistics of the plaintext as the algorithm walks it. That way “plaintext statistics” can be preserved thus passing simple automated statistical checks, or other checks.

Now consider @nix command line commands are of the form,

name -flags fields

Or

name -flag field -flag field

Many will ignore “excess fields” a trick I used to use with “checksums” that is you add a final field that “sums to zero” when you add up the whole line. You can thus check a file has not got corrupted on a line by line basis etc.

So you can just “substitute the name” and in some cases “substitute a flag” and the valid shell plaintext becomes valid shell ciphertext even though it would produce garbage results if executed.

Intersperse just one or two such substitutions in a shell file in areas it would apparently make little difference and whilst not impossible to find and work out would obfuscate beyond the abilities of most to spot with the resources they have at the time.

Because as humans we “implicitly trust” unless we have very firm reason to “distrust”. Distrusting everything is seen as,

1, Paranoid behaviour
2, Very resource wasting behaviour

(Both of which I’ve been suspected or actually accused of in the past).

On this occasion we got lucky because “odd behaviour” was seen by someone who “thinks hinky”.

As the old saying has it,

“As an attacker you have to get lucky once, as a defender you have to get lucky every time.”

Which is the reason we also have the stupid saying of,

“Fortune favours the brave”

It does not, the reality is that the odds are alway very very much against a defender.

Subtle obfuscation moves the odds even further away from the defender.

And worse there are oh so many tricks that an attacker can use.

Think about spreading the bits of an attack across time as a chained attack… That is stage one goes into “update 1”, stage two in “update 2” and so on pick the bits of the attack so they do no harm if an update is missed. One simple way to do such a thing is to look for files or information in files left by a previous update. Hiding the stages in what looks like “clean-up code” gives oh so many excuses…

Winter • March 31, 2024 9:26 AM

Re: obfuscating

@Clive

The trick in the long run though will be making the “encrypted file” look like it’s not just “printable” but “sensible” plaintext as well as not holding the whole attack.

I like the Obfuscated C contests.

My favorite is heathbar.c from 1995
‘https://www.ioccc.org/years-spoiler.html#1995

The C code:
‘https://www.ioccc.org/1995/heathbar.c

The hint(not really necessary)
‘https://www.ioccc.org/1995/heathbar.hint

The main reason we liked this entry was mainly because the main effect of the source was self documenting! 🙂

lurker • March 31, 2024 1:46 PM

@Moderator
The post from Manuel343 • March 31, 2024 1:04 PM
looks like unsolicited advertising.

@ALL
One reason Chinese squid boats roam the world’s oceans is that no commercially viable method has yet been found to farm squid. Chinese are successful farmers of crabs, prawns, salmon, catfish, tilapia and many other fresh and salt water species. Tuna is also a variety that is difficult to farm, but the Japanese pay exorbitantly for large bluefin tuna, and the Americans created a worldwide market for canned “chicken of the sea.”

JonKnowsNothing • March 31, 2024 2:18 PM

@Clive, @ fbi, lurker, ALL

re: solar flare problem for electronics

So this is maybe a few days past its sell-by date, but my game servers have been off-line in New Jersey USA since ~late Friday night (tz).

There is lots of speculation and little detail other than Data Center Issue. No one has thought of a solar flare fault or by product of the solar eclipse in the region.

It’s likely just a blown circuit, but more fun to think that the sun is finally getting some revenge for being restricted to ~50% of our 24hr cycle and for releasing a horde of game players into other entertainment areas.

I’m missing hitting the other side with Sticky Feet and a Plague Gourd. Others are missing hunting for the Egg Laying Rabbit.

The latest edition of the 3 Body Problem is pretty good. A bit less complex than the book but still contains all the main points. Good acting and very watchable. Caveat Season 2 is not anytime soon.

echo • March 31, 2024 3:54 PM

I’m rather busy at the moment so only just have time to make a short comment as a marker to hang further comments off. As tools I’m inclined to use feminist security theory and the European style multi-domain security model. Following on from International Women’s Day we have lived through Women’s History Month and the last day of this month is also the Transgender Day of Visibility.

This is a fairly old video. I selected it not because it was the clearest or best presentation Helena gives on the subject matters but because it captured her positive energy and vibrant passion. I have long admired Helena and view her as a role model. Her words are prescient and remain relevant as governance and techno feudalism and global security concerns capture our minds today.

Baroness Helena Kennedy is one of Britain’s foremost human rights lawyers. As well as her work on women’s rights, Helena has been leading work on international war crimes in Ukraine and is the Founder of the Helena Kennedy Foundation for social mobility. She’s played a key role in many prominent inquiries including the Brighton Bombing trial, the Michael Bettany espionage trial, the Guildford Four appeal, the bombing of the Israeli Embassy and fought the world’s first case about transgender rights at the European Court of Justice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zJaehBbvw4
Helena Kennedy on Human Rights

“You can’t create good law if it isn’t infused with human rights. It’s about how we deal with our neighbours, colleagues, friends. It’s about a treatise for respect” – Baroness Helena Kennedy QC argues we need Human Rights at the centre of all laws in her lecture at Hay Festival 2017, part of our 30 Reformations series.

Our 30th anniversary coincided with the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his Theses to the door at Wittenberg. So we invited international thinkers at our festivals around the world to propose their reformations of institutions and authorities, re-imagining the world.

To keep the men happy I’m balancing this with an Owen Jones discussion with Gary Stevenson. Gary is an ex City trader and was previously Citibanks highest earning trader. He doesn’t say anything nobody hasn’t known for a long time but had given up his job to advocate for reform of economics and economics education to include equality. As Gary notes (like Helena) inequality is the root cause of the system breaking and the rise of technofeudalism and global instability.

echo • March 31, 2024 3:55 PM

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2qH4kJU4xzPsXV7i5Zh6E4
The Mummafesto
Episode One
Baroness Beeban Kidron

Beeban is a leading voice of children’s rights in the digital environment and has been instrumental in establishing global standards and legislation for online safety and privacy. Beeban is the founder of digital rights foundation 5Rights and educational charity Into Film.

Prior to being appointed to the House of Lords in 2012, Beeban was an award-winning film director. Directing and producing films such as Bafta winning Oranges are not the only fruit, Victoria & Abdul, Swept Away and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.

I’ve really been enjoying this series. Stella Creasy MP (who also has a PhD in sociology) is a really good interviewer and conversationalist who lets her guests shine. I didn’t expect much from this interview but it’s obvious very fast that Beeban is on top of her brief and still very much current with topics such as AI and social media and how it might best be approached and regulated. Her latest work also ties in with the advocacy of Esther Ghey mother Brianna Ghey.

echo • March 31, 2024 3:58 PM

Drat. Just posted the ID string I use as an identifier in the wrong field. Changing it to a new one now.

Onwards!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHrFBQ0u0CE
Lella Lombardi: Remembering F1’s Female Trailblazer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ8npn0Ogyw
Trans Racing Driver Charlie Martin’s Incredible Journey

I don’t have the time to create a comment which I wanted to on military special forces selection and mental health which might also be relevant to human rights and governance so will end on this more James Bond/James Hunt style of topic.

Lella Lombardi was an amazing woman and like many women endured atrocious sexism during the 1970’s to get to the top of her profession. Today Charlie Martin, a transgender woman who is also a racing driver, is living in a world where transmisogyny is ever present. This hasn’t stopped her. Charlie Marin is the world’s first transgender woman who is due to be racing in Le Mann.

lurker • March 31, 2024 4:09 PM

@JonKnowsNothing, All
re: obliquity of the ecliptic

Maybe your server has joined the shortwave broadcasters and gone to Northern Summer schedules. BBC handily has a web page showing no useful frequencies for my morning listening. The Chinese inscrutably provide only material for RPGs: if you desire something, you must embark on a quest for it.

re: 三体
The original wove Chinese cosmology and legend into the narrative. Reports I have seen suggest these will be lost in translation, but the loss may not be noticed by an unsophisticated audience.

echo • March 31, 2024 5:18 PM

https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24218430.sam-fowles-hate-crime-act-likely-enhance-not-limit-freedom/
Sam Fowles: ‘Hate Crime Act likely to enhance, not limit freedom’
IN February I wrote a column advocating for trans rights. As a barrister, I’m fairly used to death threats, so I didn’t take the ensuing deluge of abuse particularly seriously. Until, that is, I was advised that I should no longer post my location or members of my family on social media.

https://consult.gov.scot/hate-crime/independent-review-of-hate-crime-legislation/supporting_documents/495517_APPENDIX%20%20ACADEMIC%20REPORT.pdf
A Comparative Analysis of Hate Crime Legislation
A Report to the Hate Crime Legislation Review
James Chalmers and Fiona Leverick
University of Glasgow, July 2017

https://www.thenational.scot/news/24194857.jk-rowling-elon-musk-criticise-new-scottish-hate-crime-laws/
JK Rowling and Elon Musk criticise new Scottish hate crime laws

https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/03/28/meta-anti-trans-hate-glaad-report/
Meta failing to moderate ‘extreme anti-trans hate’ on its platforms, claims report

https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/lister-v-new-college-swindon/
Lister -v- New College Swindon
Case Number: 1404223/2022

New hate crime legislation is coming into to force in Scotland. It is notable that the people screaming the loudest about Orwellian government and being silenced happen to be the loudest voices known for hate speech, or the biggest enablers of hate speech.

echo • March 31, 2024 5:20 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP2EKTCngiM
Some More News.
Are Rich People Okay?

In today’s episode, we look at what being rich does to your perception of yourself and others, the eccentricities of the super wealthy, how they use their money to hold influence over our political systems, and the dystopian future they envision for all of us.

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/65415/the-marshall-plan-paul-marshall-gb-news
The Marshall Plan
Hedge fund manager Paul Marshall is on a God-driven mission to transform the religious fabric of the nation–and he has the money to do it

Power, influence, and money…

JonKnowsNothing • March 31, 2024 5:30 PM

@lurker, All

re: 三体
The original wove Chinese cosmology and legend into the narrative. Reports I have seen suggest these will be lost in translation

Quite likely but I cannot say for sure because my Chinese is limited, very limited. I did not read it in the original.

While the current western version is quite good, the 3BP TV series does drop a lot of the nuance from the English translation version. It sort of skips quickly over “how do you figure this out” part and morphs quickly into the standard offense-defense motif narrative. It also white-casts some of the characters and white-casts the location. These aspects I find less attractive.

In 3BP TV series there are a limited number of episodes, that cost a packet each to make. So perhaps they just didn’t were not able to fund a more detailed version.

The comedy “Everything Everywhere All At Once”, was wonderful because it did not white-cast the story. It would not have mattered too much to the plot line, however, some of the exchange dialog would have flopped over cultural nuances that were so well delivered by the actors involved.

A British TV adaptation of Agatha Christ books was well done, but the star of the entire series was Joan Hickson as Miss Marple. Some of the other acting is stilted and route but she was absolutely fantastic. She had nearly zero dialog but her presence and manner centered every story and the dialog delivery was beyond understatement to the sublime.

iirc(badly) In an episode, one of the villagers is describing a young man from a family of medium means who’s point of view is left of center.

MM:

Oh, … a communist?

In Chipping Cleghorn ?

Must be very loney….

Nuance is often the best driver of a plot. Rosalind Chao as Ye Wenjie delivers nuance by the heap full.

  • Do not play with God

===

h ttps://en.wi kipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Hickson

  • Joan Bogle Hickson, OBE (5 August 1906 – 17 October 1998) was an English actress of theatre, film and television. She was known for her role as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple in the television series Miss Marple.
  • h ttps:/ / en .wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Marple_(TV_series)
  • a British television series based on the Miss Marple murder mystery novels by Agatha Christie, starring Joan Hickson in the title role. It aired from 26 December 1984 to 27 December 1992 on BBC1. All twelve original Miss Marple novels by Christie were dramatised.

echo • March 31, 2024 6:57 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVFf5xy7lXE
Helena Kennedy QC on changing the justice system, her working class roots and debating what’s right.

This is an old video but Helena explains very clearly a number of points I’ve previously made such as comments on authority, creating a supportive environment as well as allowing younger people to develop and access opportunity and grow professionally, and the issue often overlooked of needing to think things through. It’s tough to edit down and Helena interleaves so many points but an observant listener should pick up on what’s important.

Why is this five year old interview relevant to current news? In security implementation terms a crude understanding of equality is neither equality nor is it necessarily an improvement in the system and important lessons can be lost. For example: the recent paper claiming sociopathy was present equally in both men and women. This paper was deeply flawed as it lacked understanding and context. It makes no comment on systems or society, and how the issues I previously mentioned which concern women can be better understood and used as a model to change the system not just for the benefit of women but equally for men. So like I said anyone who seized on this paper and waved it around like they were God Oh Mighty didn’t have the first clue what they were talking about. Helena explains succinctly why.

nealT • March 31, 2024 7:01 PM

Winter, the obfuscated C contests are fun, but “The Underhanded C Contest” is more relevant to the backdoor story. The point is to write a program that looks innocent and non-obfuscated but acts against the user’s interests in some way. (Whereas this backdoor, with its various “tr” commands and such, does look obfuscated, and we’ve just gotten used to our configure scripts looking like that.)

Clive Robinson • March 31, 2024 8:59 PM

@ nealT, Winter, ALL,

Re : Out of sight, out of mind…

“The point is to write a program that looks innocent and non-obfuscated but acts against the user’s interests in some way.”

That is but stage 2…

You can view the stages of mal-behaviour as,

0, Overt.
1, Obfuscated.
2, Covert.
3, Undecidable.

For years malware has been like a “battering ram” or other “siege engine” it’s presence and purpose quite “overt” and in effect uses the “Might is right” style moronic tactics of “Let your fists do the thinking”.

The main downsides of overt is it makes the attacker obvious to defenders, especially in the strengths and weaknesses department and it needs considerable resources to “over come opposition” by defenders. Hence you find “crush”, “trample”, “stamp down”, “steam roller”, and similar being used descriptively. As such it works against small defenders but not against large well prepared defenders. Due to the nature of these things small defenders are numerous and ill resourced and as such are seen as “low hanging fruit” in “target rich environments”.

But two obvious things happen,

1, Individuals and small groups come together out of self interest in the face of a common threat.
2, As defensive groups grow the gain more resources and use them more efficiently as well as thinking up new defensive ideas.

Also they can more quickly “out grow” the attackers, but that can and usually does have downsides (standing armies all to often form coups against the civilian population).

Thus the more intelligent way to attack is to make it appear not as an attack or not as an attack from a recognisable source.

As I mentioned in an earlier post the old saw of,

“Fortune favours the brave”

Is a nonsense. It’s based on incorrect observation of,

“An attacker needs to only succeed once, a defender every time”

Hence although the odds are very much against defenders over all, defenders chances of success increase on any given attack the earlier they respond to attackers intent.

Thus from an attackers point of view delaying a defenders responses to gain advantage requires denying the defender knowledge. That is by hiding it from the defenders observation.

There are two basic ways to hide activity,

1, Hide it in plain sight.
2, Hide it in secret.

The first was is simple obfuscation, you make something not look like what it is. That is you know the defenders will see an activity, the trick is to get them think it is something other than what it is, hence “hide in plain sight”. Hence,

“A wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

The second way is the more difficult covert way, you make an activity unseen by the defenders. Hence,

“Use the lie of the land and approach from behind existing cover.”

However there is another form of “hiding in plain sight” where by the method is such that no matter how suspicious a defender is, no matter how they investigate they can not prove or even show there is an activity hidden or that there is a method to do so in place.

It gives the attacker,

“Full deniability even in the face of betrayal.”

Such systems have been around in communications for something like a century, we call them “Duress Codes” that are a hidden communications channel within a message plaintext.

In essence you use redundancy in a way it can not be determined from random.

I’ve discussed this on this blog in fairly recent times as it shows that there are uses for Shannon’s “Perfect Secrecy” code/cipher systems that deterministic block or stream ciphers can not do (due to unicity distance).

I’m not going to go into details for obvious reasons, but you can see early work by Shannon and Simmon’s on the idea, and extended in the writings of Adam Young, and Moti Yung in,

“Cryptovirology :
Extortion-Based Security Threats and Countermeasures”

https://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2020/tot-papers/young-1996.pdf

And later writings.

echo • March 31, 2024 10:46 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izJNEzJxngk
Leeja Miller.
AI is Bad for Democracy.

Pop video on AI and many of the problems with its use and implementation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaU6tI2pb3M
Philosophy Tube.
Abigail Thorne.
Here’s What Ethical AI Really Means.

Another pop video on AI. This explains the difference between general intelligence and the clunky problem specific AI we currently have, a lot of problems we need to solve, and the difficulties of implementing an ethical AI.

Abigail Thorn is currently scheduled to appear in Star Wars: The Acolyte.

lurker • March 31, 2024 11:18 PM

@nealT
“we’ve just gotten used to our configure scripts looking like that”

Familiarity, contempt, harrumph…
Sometimes I think configure scripts are written like that to discourage amateurs like me from masssaging them to fit platforms the original dev didn’t want to support.

Muppet Spotter • March 31, 2024 11:23 PM

@ALL

A claim is made in echo’s post above,

“So like I said anyone who seized on this paper and waved it around like they were God Oh Mighty didn’t have the first clue what they were talking about.”

But you should ask,

What paper would that be?

Those who look back will find only,

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/26/more-women-may-be-psychopaths-than-previously-thought-says-expert

No mention of a paper just a talk, the basics of which are,

hxxps://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/cambridge-festival-spotlights/clive-boddy-2024

As for Dr Clive R., you can find more on him at,

hxxps://www.aru.ac.uk/people/clive-boddy

That has a list of books and papers with nothing mentioned there.

But lets have a look at the other echo claim,

“Helena explains succinctly why.”

No, not really, in fact not at all.

If you watch the video you will discover it’s not even really about women as such.

What it’s actually about is given at about 17:25 and amplified there on in. You can reduce it to a discussion of

“People at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, politicians selling out due to their waning power, and the influence of money via international corporations”

Yes women and crime are mentioned but it’s a “porthole view” into the discussion on much of the majority of society, as they tend to be on the bottom end of the socioeconomic ladder.

In short echo is hand waving nonsense around to support a very misguided misandric outlook on life.

As others have noted echo has an agenda against this blog, it’s host, and individual posters.

One poster succinctly resorted to,

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/03/friday-squid-blogging-operation-squid.html/#comment-433827

Call it “Essential Reading”🤣

ResearcherZero • March 31, 2024 11:24 PM

@ALL

An old member of the CCP gave me a copy of 3BP a long time ago. Uncensored too. He was about to retire and it was his last trip abroad as part of a trade delegation. I read it to my friends at the time. I did get a few paranoid comments form people at the time. The usual Dungeons & Dragons, comic book, and ideas spreading by telephone wires type stuff.

It was an interesting book that raised questions about covert behaviour, loss of agreed definitions, breakdowns in communication, the sharing of ideas, human adversary and trust.

“Take the most famous human nature argument: are people by nature good or evil? In recent years, experimentalists have conducted tragedy of the commons games and observed how people solve the tragedy (if they do). A common finding is that roughly a third of participants act as selfless leaders, using whatever tools the experimenters make available to solve the dilemma of cooperation, roughly a tenth are selfish exploiters of any cooperation that arises, and the balance are guarded cooperators with flexible morals.”

“…some people are routinely honest and generous, a few are downright psychopathic, and many people fall somewhere in between. Human society would be entirely different if this were not so.”

‘https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25404

“I have to tell you this: this whole thing is not about heroism. It’s about decency. It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.”

~Dr. Bernard Rieux (from Albert Camus The Plague)

ResearcherZero • March 31, 2024 11:43 PM

The competition of ideas is beneficial, whereas the thuggery of violence is most often counterproductive. Excellence withers without an adversary, it has been said.

nealT • March 31, 2024 11:44 PM

Clive Robinson wrote:

For years malware has been like a “battering ram” or other “siege engine” it’s presence and purpose quite “overt”

If one defines backdoored software as “malware” (as opposed to only counting harmful payloads installed via the backdoor), we may already be in “stage 3”. We’ve gotten used to having thousands of software vulnerabilities revealed annually, with perhaps 0.1% being explicitly called out as “backdoors”—but the rest can rarely be proven to be accidental. In other words, it’s already undecidable whether any vulnerability is an accident or backdoor (unless the author tips their hand by submitting it to an “underhanded C” contest).

The best way to disguise a backdoor, then, is to make it look like a common vulnerability. Grab one of those lists of “top 100 vulnerabilities”, and skip down a bit so it’s not too obvious. The downside is that it’s not a “nobody but us” backdoor. And at nation-state scale, it may be hard to keep the backdoor out of a country’s own infrastructure, though a paranoid person might note that requiring something like FIPS certification could be a way to do that. A more paranoid person might note the possibility of meta-vulnerabilities—for example, encouraging the use of memory-unsafe programming languages, and raising concerns like performance if someone tries to retrofit safety. (One unproven conspiracy theory about IPsec is that the NSA sabotaged it by just making it too complicated—lots of supported algorithms, modes, etc., “for security”.)

ResearcherZero • April 1, 2024 3:16 AM

Telstra had stored the wrong alternative number for eight emergency services which prevented manual transfer of calls.

Secondary database failure “triggered an existing but previously undetected software fault”.

‘https://www.itnews.com.au/news/telstra-explains-why-triple-zero-transfers-failed-606461

–

A rundown of CVE-2024-1086 bug in kernel versions v5.14 to v6.6.14 -including hardened versions. (drop a root shell)

‘https://pwning.tech/nftables/

–

Checklist for the xz backdoor.

‘https://xeiaso.net/notes/2024/xz-vuln/

Flowchart (as presently understood)

‘https://infosec.exchange/@fr0gger/112189232773640259

And the list of packages if you need to check.

‘https://repology.org/project/xz/versions

ResearcherZero • April 1, 2024 5:31 AM

There would be a prize, a ribbon and a certificate for participating in the experiments.

Anyone who wants to volunteer would be included. I’m sure bigots, racists, and chauvinists would have magical brains, as they are so darn special. Along with some others.

‘https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-part-of-the-brain-that-controls-movement-also-guides-feelings-20240123/

–

What if fake images or videos enter the collective consciousness — spread and amplified via social media and video apps, causing large numbers of people to fall for it?

‘https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/29/hillary_clinton_election_ai/

–

Twelve cables run through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

‘https://www.wired.com/story/houthi-internet-cables-ship-anchor-path/

While the Rubymar was drifting, three cables were damaged: the Seacom/Tata cable, a 15,000-kilometer-long wire running the length of East Africa and also connecting it to India; the Asia Africa Europe-1 (AAE-1), which snakes 25,000 kilometers and links Europe to East Asia; and the Europe India Gateway (EIG), made of 15,000 kilometers of cable and joining India with the United Kingdom.

‘https://www.kentik.com/blog/what-caused-the-red-sea-submarine-cable-cuts/

Winter • April 1, 2024 5:46 AM

@ResearcherZero

What if fake images or videos enter the collective consciousness — spread and amplified via social media and video apps, causing large numbers of people to fall for it?..

Posting this just after Eastern is timely. You find your answer on your doorstep.

Look around and try to find some stories about miracles. Ask yourself when and where they started.

Winter • April 1, 2024 7:24 AM

@echo

If more people settled for being happy the world might be a better place.

I am afraid there will be too many people fighting to be more happy than the others.

“Holier than thou” has been a very potent driving force for as long as we know.

Clive Robinson • April 1, 2024 8:22 AM

@ Winter, ALL,

Re : What you are out of context mostly does not matter.

I know you were asking in a rhetorical manner about those who due to their own mental limitations and fixations actually believe “you can not” to,

“How can you take someone seriously when you don’t know if this person is a “real” man or woman?”

The answer I have is in two parts.

The first part was aptly answered many years ago with a cartoon that said,

“On the internet nobody knows you are a dog”

Meaning you can only judge people by what they profess by word or behaviour through the non physical medium that information is.

It unfortunately showed that as with all technology it could be used for good or bad and as I oft point out,

“That is decided by the observer of the directing mind within their point of view.”

Whilst it has enabled a torrent of abusive behaviour, it has in the main detached the message and the messenger, which is mostly desirable.

That is, is a “truth” any less true, because “a dog says it” rather than an “aged human with title says it”?

Judge the message not the messenger.

Which brings us to my second point and something I’ve spent most of my professional life fighting against.

Most people are biased in one way or another, you can find a very long but very incomplete list of “isms”, for which there is a lot of argument about why they exist. But if you dig down through them you come to an apparent foundation of “evolutionary behaviours” that give advantages by “social behaviours”.

In essence to protect our young who have no defenses we have family, extended family, tribe, etc through to nationalism and above.

That is there are “In-groups we stand with” and “Out-groups we distrust”. Moving a person from an “out-group” to an “in-group” has advantages and disadvantages. They are to do with resources, risk, advantage, etc in both the short term and the long term.

The arguments are a form of triage based on personal view and group-think rather than logic and reason.

For some people all they have or are is due to “group-think” it gives them faux-stability for others they can gain advantage of such people. Hence the Authoritarians and Authoritarian followers so readily seen in strong-man / cult / fascist type groups.

It does not take much thinking to realise that this is an “evolutionary dead end” and has at best only very short term advantage for the very few.

Whilst in an environment where the most valuable resource is “the mind” we can not discriminate because of the physical packaging around it, as a society it makes no sense.

The only reason to do so is for the very short term personal gain of the few and this is detrimental to all others in the short term, and every one in the long term. It’s why you see me say,

“Individual Rights v Social Responsibilities.”

Which is also,

“Short Term Greed v Long Term Benefit”

I’m all about the “Benefit” thus the “Responsibilities” thus “The promotion of mind” and “the search for truth” via what we currently call STEM. And we are at the point in our evolution where Benefit really only lies in the scarce output of the mind.

So if we can get the foundations of society right we can build solidly upon them.

And by foundations, I do not mean “solid rock” but “stable platform”. As the old saying has it,

“A rising tide lifts all well found vessels equally.”

fib • April 1, 2024 11:54 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing, lurker, Clive

t’s likely just a blown circuit, but more fun to think that the sun is finally getting some revenge for being restricted to ~50% of our 24hr cycle and for releasing a horde of game players into other entertainment areas.

Hehe, but see, there was indeed one last flare from the bustling 3615, which now fades from view. But of course it wouldn’t be so selective.

3615 continues to be a risk for class x flares.

Clive Robinson • April 1, 2024 12:30 PM

@ fib, JonKnowsNothing, lurker, ALL,

Re : Wrath of deity

“But of course it wouldn’t be so selective.”

That’s the trouble with the old gods they lack focus…

If it were me there would be a three hundred meter deep, near vertical walled crater some where near Redmond as you would expect from a deity sized plasma cutter 😉

Mind you there are a few bunkers near “the last bus stop to the South Pole” that could do with a little of that near century old, Dali “melted watch” look.

Winter • April 1, 2024 1:13 PM

@Clive

“On the internet nobody knows you are a dog”

Or a woman. Which is why many women on the internet hide behind a man’s name just to be taken seriously.

I also know female scientists hide behind a non-gendered pen name, or initials, to prevent being ignored in citations:

The gender citation gap: Approaches, explanations, and implications
‘https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/soc4.13189

vas pup • April 1, 2024 6:24 PM

@ResearcherZero and @ALL – there is spot to watch normally DW videos – see below but not all good videos are there:

AI reveals huge amounts of fraud in medical research | DW News
h ttps:/@A/www.youtube.com/watch?v=X85ZNjlHrPk

“New detection tools powered by AI have lifted the lid on what some are calling an epidemic of fraud in medical research and publishing. Last year, the number of papers retracted by research journals topped 10,000 for the first time.

One case involved the chief of a cancer surgery division at Columbia University’s medical center. An investigation found that dozens of his cancer treatment studies contained dubious data and recycled images. Other scandals have hit Harvard on the East Coast and on the West Coast it is Stanford University. A scandal there resulted in the resignation of the president last year.”

ResearcherZero • April 2, 2024 2:25 AM

@vas pup

That is the annoying thing. They don’t put all their videos on youtube, to force users to their site. Youtube also deliberately breaks alternate services by changing aspects of it’s implementation. A petty and anti-competitive strategy employed by large tech companies who regularly steal, crush and absorb others, then lie about it. And gank everyone’s data.

Google agrees to partially delete some data collected in ‘Igocnito Mode’ to avoid $5b fine.

‘https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24527732-brown-v-google-llc-settlement-agreement

–

@Clive

I’m a cruel and precision targeting god, not one of the old ones. But I do dilly-dally and take my time to re-check and re-confirm the targeting to avoid civilian casualties. On occasion, I spend so much time, everyone dies because I forgot to eliminate the threat.

At other times, I’m so unimpressed with the majority of behaviour, I refrain purposely.

–

PROXYLIB – A cluster of VPN apps is secretly turning phones into proxy nodes.

“The LumiApps platform promotes itself and its SDK as an alternative app monetization method to rendering ads to users. According to their FAQ and available information, the platform rewards developers with cash payment based on the amount of traffic that gets routed through user devices.”

‘https://www.humansecurity.com/learn/blog/satori-threat-intelligence-alert-proxylib-and-lumiapps-transform-mobile-devices-into-proxy-nodes

–

The deliberate use of starvation is a blatant violation of international law.

Criminal intent does not require the attacker’s admission but can also be inferred from the totality of the circumstances of the military campaign.

‘https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/australia-icj-judge-hilary-charlesworth-israel-suspend-gaza-idf-military-operation

Intentionally starving civilians by “depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies” is also a war crime.

Geneva Convention IV, aimed at the protection of non-combatants in IACs, provides that states must allow the free passage of medical consignments, food, and other relief supplies for the benefit of the civilian population. The Security Council issued several forceful resolutions against the Syrian government’s use of starvation in 2014–15.

https://www.justsecurity.org/29157/siege-warfare-starvation-civilians-war-crime/

In 1998 the International Criminal Court Statute codified starvation methods as a war crime in international armed conflicts.

‘https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RS-Eng.pdf

A 2019 amendment expanded this doctrine to cover noninternational armed conflicts – conflicts between states and organized armed groups, or between organized armed groups. In addition to food, the legal definition of starvation also includes deprivation of water, shelter and medical care.
https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XVIII-10-g&chapter=18&clang=_en

On 4 and 5 November, seven water facilities across the Gaza Strip were directly hit and sustained major damage, including three sewage pipelines in Gaza city, two water reservoirs (in Gaza City, Rafah and Jabalia refugee camp) and two water wells in Rafah. The Gaza municipality warned about the imminent risk of sewage flooding.

‘https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-30

lurker • April 2, 2024 2:32 AM

@JonKnowsNothing

‘https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDWJ213d2Ucr-3q9LDF9P1_j3Rr3GMJeS

三体 30 eps, has YT ads at start of each ep, and embedded chinese ads,
dialog appears accurate to book both Zh & En CC subs, but events may be shuffled to suit TV program flow, some events omitted for political sensitivity, some padding to make up.

ResearcherZero • April 2, 2024 2:35 AM

Ukraine is using AI technology to negate GPS jamming effects and strike targets that need a lot of Western technology. Ukraine claims 12% of Russian refining capacity is now offline, while Reuters calculates it’s up to 14%.

‘https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/01/energy/ukrainian-drones-disrupting-russian-energy-industry-intl-cmd/index.html

Volodin’s letter to President Putin proposed to implement the concept of “de-Westernization” in the Russian Federation after the elections.

‘https://informnapalm.org/en/russia-after-the-elections/

lurker • April 2, 2024 2:50 AM

@ResearcherZero

How many blue helmets would it take now to enforce the provisions of UNGA Resolution 181?
How many British are now ashamed of their government’s abdication of responsibility in 1948?

ResearcherZero • April 2, 2024 4:06 AM

@lurker

More British are ashamed of their government’s abdication of responsibility in 1948 than Australian’s are of their government’s abdication of responsibility for the continued atrocities committed against Australia’s traditional owners and their children. And certainly more than the number of GOP members who fail to condemn the language of violence.

When is enough’s enough?

The Republican Party excuses Trump’s conduct, despite no former nominee acting in such a disgusting manner.

‘https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/31/politics/trump-dangerous-rhetoric-analysis/index.html

What Trump is doing—encouraging this violence—is a time bomb.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/donald-trumps-incitements-to-violence-have-crossed-an-alarming-threshold

“First, they change the view of violence. And Mr. Trump, since 2015, he started saying at his rallies, using his rallies and campaign events for radicalizing people. And he started saying, oh, in the old days, you used to hurt people. The problem is, Americans don’t hurt each other anymore.”

“So now he’s going into a new phase of openly dehumanizing his targets so that will lessen the taboos in the future.”

‘https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trumps-ramped-up-rhetoric-raises-new-concerns-about-violence-and-authoritarianism

–

More annoying than Clippy (and crashing explorer executable)

‘https://sherwoodmedia.com/news/microsoft-copilot-ai-search-chatgpt-is-making-up-fake-vladimir-putin-quotes/

–

In 1999, an equation used to calculate eGFR was modified to adjust Black people’s results compared to everyone else’s, based on some studies with small numbers of Black patients and a long-ago false theory about differences in creatinine levels. Until recently that meant many lab reports would list two results… Numerous formulas or “algorithms” used in medical decisions — treatment guidelines, diagnostic tests, risk calculators — adjust the answers according to race or ethnicity in a way that puts people of color at disadvantage.

‘https://apnews.com/article/kidney-transplant-race-black-inequity-bias-d4fabf2f3a47aab2fe8e18b2a5432135

ResearcherZero • April 2, 2024 4:49 AM

Putin’s assertive nuclear rhetoric is strategically unhelpful and politically dangerous.

‘https://thebulletin.org/2024/03/putins-nuclear-warnings-heightened-risk-or-revolving-door/

The scientists made calls on the public to exert pressure on its leaders to pull back on the dangerous rhetoric… They also called Trump’s comments about expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal “ill-considered” and lamented Trump’s “troubling propensity to discount or outright reject expert advice related to international security.”

https://bigthink.com/the-present/thanks-trump-the-doomsday-clock-moves-closest-to-midnight-since-the-1950s/

Mr. Asif appeared to be reacting to a fake news article published on awdnews[.]com.

“The proliferation of fake news stories — spread on social networks and produced by a variety of sources including pranksters, foreign governments and enterprising individuals who hope to receive advertising revenue by driving traffic to their websites — has become an increasingly serious problem.”

‘https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/24/world/asia/pakistan-israel-khawaja-asif-fake-news-nuclear.html

–

Grozev has a long track record of uncovering Russian documents and reveals he found one that may link the 29155 unit to a directed energy weapon. Members of the Kremlin’s infamous military intelligence sabotage squad have been placed at the scene of suspected attacks on overseas US government personnel and their family members, leading victims to question what Washington knows.

“this particular unit had been engaged with — somewhere, somehow — empirical tests of a directed energy unit.”

—try adding a couple more decades to any FOI requests.

‘https://www.cbsnews.com/news/havana-syndrome-russia-evidence-60-minutes/

The approaching future • April 2, 2024 5:18 AM

@ResearcherZero
@lurker

“More British are ashamed of their government’s abdication of responsibility in 1948”

“The Republican Party excuses Trump’s conduct, despite no former nominee acting in such a disgusting manner.”

The two are not unconnected

Then the question of fascists hiding behind accusing others of fascism is not just a tactic of Russian politics, and can be put in the admixture.

Some British people are realising that the UK Labour Party has been

“taken over by Blair-rights”

especially the current leadership with the expression “Purple Politics” being said in increasing frequency.

The fact is Tony Blair via his religious convictions strongly supports Zionism likewise the Blair-rights are more orthodox leaning than the current Pope. Which means in English Politics of today there is no non Zionist supporting party to vote for.

Remember, in every lie there is a truth…

You might find this from an Israeli University of interest,

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/britains-continuing-abdication-of-responsibility-f

So the violence will likely continue and build more visibly toward a global war yet again.

echo • April 2, 2024 6:36 AM

Presently the rightoids are kicking off about Scotland’s new hate crime law and the American historian and expert on fascism Timothy Snyder is wondering why Europeans have a handle on Kremlin backed spy networks and the US doesn’t. I woke up this morning with a frazzled brain so…! Time for an interlude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-sJtUpftFU
Yoann et Marie Bourgeois – Celui qui tombe

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/452403/misunderstanding-in-moscow-by-beauvoir-simone-de/9781784878252
Misunderstanding in Moscow by Simone de Beauvoir.

I quite like the concepts of viewing time vertically or horizontally, or viewing it as a circle or a spiral not just the imagination free lazy assumption of a straight line. Linear progress like rationality can be somewhat of a myth. It’s something which events are teaching us today. The art performance speaks for itself. A decent review or long essay on Misunderstanding in Moscow is good enough to illustrate the point. The book may one day be a bit too on the nose and I have enough mental images of Cold War Moscow not to mention Russia behaving like a bad ex who won’t go away. European intellectuals romance with Russian culture was always a one way street which Russia exploited to the hilt. But that’s neither here nor there.

I find this performance interesting in the sense history and culture and possibly mathematics (for the kinds of people who like it) and relationships and gender and contrasts of gender and expression and sense of play and tragedy and subjective experiences and the gaze of society looking on and texture, and angsty mental health contrasting with the haunting meanings layered in the music playing all roll together. There’s really quite a lot going on.

As for Misunderstanding in Moscow I’m looking for other feminist literature which appeals to a more lighter mood.

echo • April 2, 2024 6:38 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXmcBZ1Yhlw
Silicon Curtain
Valeria Kovtun – Unpacking Techniques Russia used to Implant its Lies and Narratives into your Head

A lot of this discussion resonates. A key theme of this post running from the issues at the top to the bottom is values alongside things like cognitive resilience and communication and all the other useful tools, as well as being alert to active measures to protect democracy.

In closing Valeria discusses the need for Russia and its people to take responsibility and the need to build civic institutions which protect against an evil regime arising and she sounds very angry when she’s saying this. Surprise, women can be angry and justifiably so.

fib • April 2, 2024 8:15 AM

I’m looking for other feminist literature which appeals to a more lighter mood.

Because living in an ideological silo does wonders for the Final Truth…

Clive Robinson • April 2, 2024 9:14 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

Re : ICTsec supply chain fail side effects.

This is funny in one way but not in others. It’s also an instructive lesson to teach kids chemistry in the kitchen[1].

A little while back a well known industrial chemical shifter that disgueses it’s products as “processed food” got hit by a cyber attack…

The result caused a chain of events,

1, Industrial processed product flow stopped.
2, The price of such products went up extraordinarily.
3, One seasonal product became unavailable.

This was about as far as supply chain analysis normally goes, but the reality is it does not stop there… “The ball keeps rolling” or “The dominoes jeep falling” depending on your chosen metaphor.

So,

4, The “if they can, the I can” mentality kicks in and so a process starts.
5, Recipes are sort and found.
6, Recipes are tried and compared.
7, Blog posts and YouTube vids appear.

Such is sort of predictable but…

8, Vids a quarter hour long get “In 5 Minutes …” Titles…

So let me present,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EIf7XtSRwGg

“4-Ingredient Homemade CREAM CHEESE In 5 Minutes — Does It Taste Like the Real Thing?”

Whilst the actual answer is

“No it tastes a lot better”

Importantly at least the presenter explains who got hit by the cyber-attack and hence why the video.

Actually it would taste better with three times the amount of “unsalted butter, added or plain greek yogurt was added. But as a basic recipe that’s easy to remember (actually it’s a basic “cottage” or “farmers” cheese recipe before you add butter and blend so two for the price of one). Oh and instead of lemon juice, you can use apple vinegar that you can make with just a sliced apple and glass jar with water in it it takes one to three weeks depending on the weather)…

[1] Cheese in all it’s forms is a “natural plastic” so remember that next time you pull a slice of yellow rubber out of what looks like a cellaphane wrap 😋 Basically milk protein unravels in the presence of acid which vinegar or most citrus fruit juices are, warmth just speeds it up. The result is casin which is like nitro cellulose one of the first industrial use plastics… So recipe number 3 😇

echo • April 2, 2024 11:21 AM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abductions_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War

During the Russo-Ukrainian War,[5] Russia has forcibly transferred almost 20 thousand Ukrainian children to areas under its control, assigned them Russian citizenship, forcibly adopted them into Russian families, and created obstacles for their reunification with their parents and homeland.[6][7] The United Nations has stated that these deportations constitute war crimes.[7][8] The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for President of Russia Vladimir Putin[9] (who has explicitly supported the forced adoptions, including by enacting legislation to facilitate them)[10] and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for their alleged involvement.[9] According to international law, including the 1948 Genocide Convention, such acts constitute genocide if done with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a nation or ethnic group.[11][a]

This is genocide.

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/tennessee-passes-bill-allowing-non

Under this bill, Tennessee would be prohibited from deeming parents unfit for adoption if they reject transgender youth, believing such identities to be sinful. Similarly, the state would be required to allow parents who are religiously or morally opposed to homosexuality to adopt gay children. If a parent believes that conversion therapy through their church can “cure” LGBTQ+ identification, this belief cannot be considered contrary to the best interest of an LGBTQ+ child. The bill risks exposing every LGBTQ+ child in the state to potential religious abuse, conversion therapy, and family rejection.

This is genocide.

Clive Robinson • April 2, 2024 2:01 PM

@ ALL,

Re : More than CTE.

As some here know I have an interest in head trauma both from single serious insult to repeated minor insult.

There is a causal link now sufficiently justified between repeated minor insult and “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy”(CTE).

Which in effect destroys the persons personality bit by bit and often leads to significant changes not just in personality but behaviour as well. Leading to quit visible antisocial if not criminal behaviour followed by dementia.

But importantly it causes significant depression, memory loss and cognitive impairment. Leading to the equivalent loss of IQ and “Emotional Intelligence”(EI) and even physical control.

As some are aware the US NFL has been hit rather badly by CTE. With many early deaths with early dementia followed by autopsy results showing CTE. As far as I’m aware it can not currently be tested clinically for directly on living brains,

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28975240/

Also some here are aware here that I’ve noted similar issues to CTE with those who have the mysterious “Havana Syndrome”. And I have suggested that if a directed energy weapon is involved it’s not the continuous power that needs to be considered but the energy in pulse edges and the pulse repetition rate. Also the use of two overlapping beams that provide a small “cocked hat area” where the harm happens.

As far as I’m aware this has not been “officially considered” in the enquiries so far held.

But what of brain insults that are not repetitive but near fatal single events?

As longterm readers know I was attacked in early autumn 2000 and received a head injury that should by all that’s been written have more than probably been fatal.

I’ve suffered from it since as I’ve mentioned. One skill I lost was the ability to read, and had to learn again and I’ve not even got to a 1/10th of where I was. Longterm depression chases me like a wolf hunting and the “experts” on both sides gave up on me as being effectively incurable…

But there are other issues.

Well it appears that near a quarter of a century later the medical profession are taking things more seriously,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68557769

I know and have experienced much of what those two people interviewed have suffered and still do suffer.

Such research is apparently to late for me, but if this post saves just one other person what I’ve suffered, well, it will be a blessing.

ResearcherZero • April 2, 2024 11:17 PM

@The approaching future

Why would everything have to be connected? Discussion does not have to be a competition.

Failing to condemn violence is a popular pastime of all of humanity. Like drinking booze.
The Easter Sermon keeps suggesting that humanity stop shooting one another. Yet we don’t.

Each few generations we all want to start killing again because we forgot the lessons.
Bacteria cannot climb into a wound without it being open in the first place.

Often there is little difference between parties, but the packaging of their rhetoric.
Each feeds stories to the media to distract the public from their similar policy. Both major parties are willing to do cruel things to hang onto power. Occasionally one will abandon all it’s principles to try and gain power – each of it’s members hang onto their seat. Most of the public is so far removed that they do not know, or care who is lying.

Every party has it’s factions. No one party is any one thing. It is a collection of people with different ideas. Even the Nazi party had members who tried to blow up Hitler. Stalin’s group of thugs all tried to one-up each other, and later happily had each other shot.

The GRU’s members often try and get dirt on each other, and the SVR have been known to shoot them in the head for breaking into their buildings and cracking their safes.

But you don’t need a gun to slip a knife in a back. A dirty wound will do the trick.

In 1992, an international consensus panel defined sepsis as:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMra1208623

“The incidence of severe sepsis depends on how acute organ dysfunction is defined and on whether that dysfunction is attributed to an underlying infection.”

And you are all free to debate how long the wound has been open, exposed or infected.

–

DinodasRAT (V10) Linux implant targeting Red Hat-based distributions and Ubuntu Linux.

‘https://securelist.com/dinodasrat-linux-implant/112284/

Earth Krahang, which has a strong focus on Southeast Asia, also exhibits some level of overlap with another China-nexus threat actor tracked as Earth Lusca (aka RedHotel). Both the intrusion sets are likely managed by the same threat actor and connected to a Chinese government contractor called I-Soon.

Earth Krahang heavily employs open-source scanning tools that perform recursive searches of folders such as .git or .idea. The threat actor also resorts to simply brute-forcing directories to help identify files that may contain sensitive information such as file paths or passwords on the victim’s servers. They also tend to examine the subdomains of their targets to find interesting and possible unmaintained servers.

To check for vulnerabilities it can leverage, it uses one of any number of open source, off-the-shelf tools, including sqlmap, nuclei, xray, vscan, pocsuite, and wordpressscan.

‘https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/19/china_cyberspies_earth_krahang/

–

APT41

UNAPIMON is a C++ malware delivered in DLL form (_{random}.dll), which uses Microsoft Detours for hooking the CreateProcessW API function, allowing it to unhook critical API functions in child processes. UNAPIMON employs defense evasion techniques to prevent child processes from being monitored…

‘https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/24/d/earth-freybug.html

Of the 20 APTs operated by China, there are 5 in particular who have targeted Linux distributions including Ubuntu, Red Hat and CentOS.

‘https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/forms/enterprise/decade-of-the-rats

Bronze Union (aka Emissary Panda, APT27), PassCV, Casper (aka Lead), WLNXSPLINTER and the WINNTI APT group used compromised Linux servers as operational beachheads.

“This report detailed how this quintet of threat actor groups have managed to successfully infiltrate and maintain persistence on servers that comprise the backbone of the majority of large data centers using a newly identified Linux malware toolset obfuscated by a kernel-level module rootkit, all of which allows them to remain nearly undetectable on the infected systems. The fact that this new Linux malware toolset has been in the wild for the better part of the last decade without having been detected and publicly documented prior to this report makes it highly probable that the number of impacted organizations is significant and the duration of the infections lengthy.”

“The rootkits were installed by way of an interactive bash script, which in some cases reached out to an online build server to determine particulars about the target system (distro, kernel version, etc) before delivering a bespoke rootkit and backdoor.”

“This ensemble, who have spent the better part of the last decade successfully targeting organizations in stealthy cross-platform attacks, continue to operate relatively undetected while undertaking multiple strategic and economic espionage operations.”

The group also leveraged Linux for the development of backdoors, kernel rootkits, and online-build environments.

‘https://www.blackberry.com/content/dam/blackberry-com/asset/enterprise/pdf/direct/report-bb-decade-of-the-rats.pdf

ResearcherZero • April 2, 2024 11:31 PM

“understanding sepsis requires reframing the research focus to identify immunometabolic and neurophysiological mechanisms of cellular and organ dysfunction.”

“Sepsis” is an imprecise clinical diagnostic term used to describe patients that have a continuum of abnormalities in organ function.

Sepsis: Current Dogma and New Perspectives

‘https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(14)00115-0

–

Device Bound Session Credentials

‘https://blog.chromium.org/2024/04/fighting-cookie-theft-using-device.html

Cryptographic keys that cannot be exported from the user’s device under normal circumstances. There is a seperate [sic] key for each session, and it should not be possible to detect two different session keys are from one device.

(DBSC will not prevent temporary access to the browser session while the attacker is resident on the user’s device.)

‘https://github.com/WICG/dbsc

(separate is often misspelled as seperate)

ResearcherZero • April 3, 2024 1:20 AM

@The approaching future

I could point out one specific difference between ideologies of party members. Conservative members long believed that they were somehow immune from foreign influence. Blackmail and being fed false information for example. Some were warned repeatedly they were a target.

Foreign intelligence ops that specifically targeted themselves as individuals. Some were worse than others. The odd clown believed the very dangerous situation they were in, was in fact an opportunity. Occasionally, perhaps for political point scoring, certain politicians say the opposite of what they are advised. Even after they are advised not to politicise it.

“The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality,” tweeted Trump.

“I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of ……..discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).”

‘https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a35020930/trump-secretary-of-state-mike-pompeo-china-solarwinds-cyberattack/

The U.S. Government attributes this activity to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service:
https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa20-352a

Mike Pompeo identified Russia around the same time that Trump made the announcement.

“This was a very significant effort, and I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.”

‘https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/secretary-state-pompeo-says-hack-was-pretty-clearly-russian-n1251798

–

A person familiar with internal U.S. government deliberations on the matter echoed Warner’s accusation, saying that the White House had weakened the language attributing the campaign to Russia and that the word “likely” was a surprise inclusion in the final statement.

‘https://cyberscoop.com/trump-russia-solarwinds-hack-warner/

“Both Kazuar and Sunburst used a very similar cryptographic technique throughout their code: specifically, a 64-bit hashing algorithm called FNV-1a, with an added extra step known as XOR to alter the data.”

The two pieces of malware also used the same cryptographic process to generate unique identifiers to keep track of different victims, in this case an MD5 hashing function followed by an XOR. Both samples used the same mathematical function to determine a random “sleeping time” before the malware communicates back to the the C2 server.

https://securelist.com/sunburst-backdoor-kazuar/99981/

Kazuar has been attributed to Turla.

Kazuar was discovered in 2017 by Unit 42, Palo Alto’s threat intelligence team.

Attributed to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB):

‘https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/pensive-ursa-uses-upgraded-kazuar-backdoor/

Turla (Snake, Uroburos)

Uroburos is the same group that performed a cyberattack against the United States of America in 2008 with a malware called Agent.BTZ.

Uroburos checks for the presence of Agent.BTZ and remains inactive if it is installed. It appears that the authors of Uroburos speak Russian (the language appears in a sample), which corroborates the relation to Agent.BTZ. Furthermore, according to public newspaper articles, this fact, the usage of Russian, also applied for the authors of Agent.BTZ.

A list of analysis by security researchers on Turla activity cab be found here.

‘https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0010/

ResearcherZero • April 3, 2024 2:38 AM

There have been a number of wars to end war, and the “free” speech earned was earned in blood. Given how many fell in both World Wars and other conflicts, we owe a responsibility.

I’d prefer that people did not encourage violence and resolved animosity respectfully.

There are a lot of innocent people who have already died. Many you won’t read about, and in a number of those cases it was done in an attempt to try and prevent intelligence coming to light regarding planned activities by The Kremlin, it’s intelligence services and military.

What is particularly disturbing is that they did not know anything. Yet they were killed.
In some cases it was done as a psychological operation aimed at relatives or friends. Just on the off chance that one of these distantly related persons might have seen something.
Wiping out family members of people who themselves posed no risk. Preemptive cruelty.

Illegal annexations and invasions also lead to what may be “accidental” cases of murder.

Flight MH17 was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, when it was shot out of the sky over territory held by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. All 298 people on board were killed, including 15 crew members and 283 passengers from 17 countries.

‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-18/dutch-court-gives-verdict-on-mh17-plane-crash/101668556

There were a number of deliberate killings by Russian Intelligence Services well before, and after 2014. Those operations were carried out to silence people or prevent intelligence being passed on. There were other killings carried out against individuals or their family, friends and colleagues – for passing on intelligence. Some victims were misidentified and then killed. Other innocent victims were killed in an attempt to frame individuals.

In some cases there appears to be no clear reason why they were murdered. Fishing perhaps?
Such cases did not take place in a conflict zone. They occurred in peaceful urban settings.

A lot of the intelligence came at a very high cost. But feel free to dance in the blood of my friends and colleagues. They laid down their lives so that you can have that privilege.

“Assassination attempts against foes of Putin have been common during his nearly quarter century in power. Over the years, Kremlin political critics, turncoat spies and investigative journalists have been killed or assaulted in a variety of ways.”

There also have been reports of prominent Russian executives dying under mysterious circumstances, including falling from windows, although whether they were deliberate killings or suicides is sometimes difficult to determine.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-kremlin-enemy-navalny-prigozhin-litvinenko-skripal-958c2ed6b8d60ecc4f64092fc1f9ceb5

“Mr. Litvinenko moved in a circle of exiled dissidents clustered around Boris A. Berezovsky, a fugitive oligarch who tilted against Mr. Putin from London and who was found hanged in 2013 under circumstances that were never categorically explained.”

That was in stark contrast to Mr. Skripal, a former military intelligence officer in Russia, who arrived in Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap and lived quietly in an English cathedral town.

“This guy is not a big critic,” Marina Litvinenko, the widow of the whistle-blower, said of Mr. Skripal, speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location outside London. “Everyone says he kept a low profile.”

‘https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/world/europe/alexander-litvinenko-sergei-skripal.html

161st Special Purpose Specialist Training Center in eastern Moscow

Russian military intelligence officer of Unit 29155, Denis V. Sergeev charged…

Its operations are so secret, according to assessments by Western intelligence services, that the unit’s existence is most likely unknown even to other G.R.U. operatives.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/world/europe/skripal-arrest.html

Winter • April 3, 2024 3:13 AM

@ResearcherZero
Re: Russian murders

Just remember that Putin adores Stalin, a man who just killed everyone who eventually might become a problem. Stalin’s cruelty had no bounds, the man was a paranoid[1] psychopath.

Putin does everything to emulate him.

[1] But everyone did want to murder him, and would do so the moment they had the opportunity.

ResearcherZero • April 3, 2024 3:36 AM

Discipline is particularly important in a war zone. Along with communication.

The IDF instructed aid workers not to use radios as they might be stolen.

‘https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-attack-strike-world-central-kitchen-b2522280.html

“The army’s killing of seven aid workers in the Gaza Strip on Monday night stemmed from poor discipline among field commanders, not a lack of coordination between the army and aid organizations, army sources said on Tuesday.”

‘https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-02/ty-article/.premium/idf-sources-gaza-aid-workers-killed-because-officers-on-the-ground-do-what-they-want/0000018e-a06e-d9c2-afbe-a8fe319b0000

ResearcherZero • April 3, 2024 3:50 AM

@Winter

I know of three separate incidents where directed energy weapons were seized from Russian agents. In the 1990’s. Keeping quiet about it did not keep anyone safe or improve security.

We also know which particular unit was behind operations and who oversaw it.

ResearcherZero • April 3, 2024 4:11 AM

@Winter

Albert Averyanov, son of Andrei Averyanov, commander of Unit 29155, was spotted outside victim’s home.

‘https://thedebrief.org/explosive-investigation-links-russias-shadowy-unit-29155-to-havana-syndrome-attacks-on-u-s-officials-worldwide/

paywalled

Suspected of having played a role in the crash of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane, Averyanov is known for having contributed to a number of destabilization operations in Europe as head of a military intelligence unit.

At the end of July, during a meeting with a Malian delegation at a Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, he appeared alongside Russian ministers and the heads of conglomerates surrounding Putin.

‘https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/08/30/andrei-averyanov-the-russian-general-closely-watched-by-western-intelligence_6116106_4.html

ResearcherZero • April 3, 2024 4:22 AM

The Insider, 60 Minutes, and Der Spiegel say obtained phone and travel records revealed Averyanov was in constant communication and in the company of other known members of GRU’s Unit 29155.

Via a third party, The Insider, 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel was able to share with Taylor two photographs of Gordienko — later to become Albert Averyanov’s mentor — whom the investigative team has reason to believe had been in the Frankfurt area as part of an advance reconnaissance team just before the attack. One of the photographs was taken in 2015, the other in 2017. Taylor did not hesitate in confirming that Gordienko was the suspect skulking around outside U.S. consulate housing.

‘https://theins.ru/en/politics/270425

The approaching future • April 3, 2024 5:10 AM

@ResearchZero
@Winter

“Boris A. Berezovsky, a fugitive qoligarch who tilted against Mr. Putin from London and who was found hanged in 2013 under circumstances that were never categorically explained.”

Five years later, and more than 20 suspicious deaths in the Russian Community,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56695489

The London Police finally started to work out what was going on.

The stuff in Sailsbury was a side show and those suspected were probably not those who did the act but cover by misdirection.

Something that was obvious at the time due to over acting but few picked up on.

Winter • April 3, 2024 5:41 AM

@The approaching future

The London Police finally started to work out what was going on…

Showing the UK police might not care about the well-being of Russians living in the UK, or maybe, all foreigners living in the UK, or women, or just people.

‘https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/04/radical-police-not-fit-for-purpose

Once we start asking these questions, we begin to see not who the police serve, but who they harm. The answer is, a lot of people. We can conduct a quick experiment to test where you land on either side of this divide. If you see a policeman, police car or group of police officers, do you feel safer or slightly on edge?

If your reaction is the former, then you are fortunate. If it is the latter, you join the thousands of black, brown, Asian and minority-ethnic people, working-class people, and women, who have been assaulted, framed, given overly long sentences and criminalised for petty offences. Policing has not lost its way, but is functioning exactly in the way it was designed to do – to wield disproportionate, coercive power to maintain a social order that protects the powerful and victimises the weak.

Since its beginning, the primary purpose of Anglo-European policing was to exert control and quell uprisings by those demanding rights – be they sovereign, racial or economic – and protect those with land, property and wealth.

echo • April 3, 2024 9:35 AM

Showing the UK police might not care about the well-being of Russians living in the UK, or maybe, all foreigners living in the UK, or women, or just people.

A huge amount of the responsibility falls on the Tories who are, quite frankly, insane. Roll on the General Election. They have earned every ounce of venom as they are (hopefully) kicked into the dustbin of history.

To say UK police have issues is a bit of an understatement. I’ll spare people the ten page lecture.

Clive Robinson • April 3, 2024 9:03 PM

@ ALL folks in the US.

I’m hearing stories that some municipalities in the US are going a little “loopy two tunes” over the total solar eclipse in a few hours time.

Apparently they have gone onto full emergency footing, something they don’t do in hurricane / flood / wildfire / etc seasons.

Which begs the question,

“Why on Earth?”

Yes it gets dark quickly and a little chilly. Whilst some people will stand in daft places to watch mostly there is no danger involved.

Maybe they fear an uprising of “end of the world” types but even the Dogh-Gnarled can not be that daft, or can he?

Maybe time for some AI-faux-video of him calling down damnation on XXX like your every day’s a Sin-day Preacher demanding you buy your way out of damnation might amuse 😉

ResearcherZero • April 3, 2024 10:51 PM

@echo

If you ever have the unfortunate experience of having to deal with such problems you will find it does not matter which party is sitting in power, the response remains identical.

It’s more than a little frustrating when you are warning senior members of government and senior members of state police forces that someone is at imminent risk of murder, and all you get in return is a grimacing, sad looking expression and a complete lack of response.

–

@The approaching future

What is publicly disclosed and not publicly disclosed are two very different things.

Clearly you have little experience, and zero military or intelligence experience to base your assumptions on. London is one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world.

–

Microsoft still unable to discern how 2016 MSA signing key got ganked.

‘https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/microsoft-blamed-for-a-cascade-of-security-failures-in-exchange-breach-report/

‘https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-04/CSRB_Review_of_the_Summer_2023_MEO_Intrusion_Final_508c.pdf

back in 2010…

The IE (CVE-2010-0249) vulnerability allowed remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by accessing a pointer associated with a deleted object, related to incorrectly initialized memory and improper handling of objects in memory.

“The vulnerability was reported to Microsoft last August by Meron Sellen from BugSec, an Israeli security research company.”

An attacker could exploit the vulnerability by constructing a specially crafted Web page. When a user views the Web page, the vulnerability could allow remote code execution. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the logged-on user. If a user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system.

‘https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-knew-of-ie-zero-day-flaw-since-last-september/

“Once the malware is downloaded and installed, it opens a back door that allows the attacker to perform reconnaissance and gain complete control over the compromised system. The attacker can now identify high value targets and start to siphon off valuable data from the company.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20120911141122/http://blogs.mcafee.com/corporate/cto/operation-aurora-hit-google-others

The targets received an e-mail or instant message that appeared to come from someone they knew and trusted.

“[The SCMs] were wide open,” says Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee’s vice president for threat research. “No one ever thought about securing them, yet these were the crown jewels of most of these companies in many ways — much more valuable than any financial or personally identifiable data that they may have and spend so much time and effort protecting.”

‘https://www.wired.com/2010/03/source-code-hacks/

APT17’s members are allegedly operating as contractors for the Jinan bureau of the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS)

‘https://www.zdnet.com/article/apt-doxing-group-expose-apt17-as-jinan-bureau-of-chinas-security-ministry/

‘https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2010/03/operationaurora_wp_0310_fnl.pdf

–

‘https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2024/04/google-patches-critical-vulnerability-for-androids-with-qualcomm-chips

Forensic companies are rebooting devices in ‘After First Unlock’ state into fastboot mode on Pixels and other devices to exploit vulnerabilities there and then dump memory. Google implemented a fix by zeroing the memory when booting fastboot mode, and only enabling USB connectivity after the zeroing process is completed, rendering the attacks impractical.

‘https://source.android.com/docs/security/overview/acknowledgements

‘https://source.android.com/docs/security/bulletin/2024-04-01

ResearcherZero • April 3, 2024 11:16 PM

Under all the bravado, most are rather hesitant to confront someone they believe to be dangerous. Probably for good reason, as most have minimal training and experience. All the tough talk vanishes quickly once individuals are confronted with the actual reality.

It’s quite hard to charge someone once they have fled the country for a jurisdiction without an extradition agreement. Especially if that country will not agree to cooperate. Prosecutors are even more sweaty and nervous than their counterparts in the police in such situations. They have an even greater dislike of bullets, car bombs and various toxins.

ResearcherZero • April 3, 2024 11:37 PM

“One of the things that dissuaded us of that was the fact that children were getting… bloody noses [and] bleeding from the ear. There were seizures happening in children. And then pets reacting to noises or pressures that people were feeling at the same time.”

A $1 million medical bill is quite a high expense to cop. Especially doing your job. Many top counter-intelligence agents working on issues dealing with Russia have been targeted.

Many of these articles report “no smoking gun”, but they do not have access to classified intelligence. Disclosing information may risk sources/victims/methods. But politicians are often reluctant to disclose information through fear of “creating public panic”.

We also do not want agitate the public and create unneeded animosity towards Russia.

This is not an excuse however to ignore the plight of those dealing with the problem.

‘https://www.cbsnews.com/news/5-year-havana-syndrome-investigation-finds-new-evidence-of-who-might-be-responsible-60-minutes/

“A senior defense official was hit with Havana Syndrome symptoms as recently as July 2023, during a NATO summit in Lithuania focused on supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/04/01/pentagon-confirms-defense-official-experienced-havana-syndrome-symptoms-at-2023-nato-summit/

echo • April 4, 2024 3:14 AM

@ResearcherZero

If you ever have the unfortunate experience of having to deal with such problems you will find it does not matter which party is sitting in power, the response remains identical.

It’s more than a little frustrating when you are warning senior members of government and senior members of state police forces that someone is at imminent risk of murder, and all you get in return is a grimacing, sad looking expression and a complete lack of response.

Trans people were warning government and media and anyone who would listen there would be another death. It just happened. It’s developing news but a young trans boy came out to a friend and was bullied horribly at school. He just unalived himself yesterday. That’s the only news I have so far.

So, like, tell me about it.

ResearcherZero • April 4, 2024 5:27 AM

@echo

You would imagine they might pay a little attention to foreign agents popping bombs under cars and in hotel rooms, shooting people, importing container loads of weapons. I mean sure ignore the ordinary person getting whacked, but they did stick a car bomb under the former head of the Armed Robbery Division and the Minister of Police. I don’t imagine their families were too happy about them being blown to pieces on a suburban street.

They also stuck a bomb under a car in the CBD around lunch that had the potential to take out the lower floor of a hotel and wipe out a good 50 pedestrians passing by on the street.

I don’t expect them to care about the deaths of my friends and colleagues, but endangering the lives of large groups of innocent civilians is usually considered terrorism. When you do not attempt to prosecute such behaviour it signals a tolerance of unrestrained violence.

–

Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said nearly 80,000 cases of war crimes have been registered in Ukraine since the war began in February 2022.

‘https://apnews.com/article/congress-ukraine-russia-war-crimes-torture-1015b6b6393489d088b0980225ff4509

“clearly excessive”

Proportionality matters:

The warrants also allege that the series of attacks on Ukraine’s electrical grid, taken together, constitute a crime against humanity, indicating that the prosecutor’s office is looking at the overall course of conduct in the war as well as the legality of individual incidents.

The crimes were repeated after Bucha, even after the events were widely covered in the media, making it impossible for Russian leaders to later claim they were unaware they were going on, Kostin says. “We see the elements of genocide in many crimes committed, and we see them as a pattern of conduct of Russia.”

‘https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/world/europe/icc-arrest-warrants-russia-war-crimes.html

“I personally believe violence should be avoided,” he said. “I believe that we have more tools that we can use to restructure society politically and socially without resorting to violence. We have seen the damage that violence does to our collective humanity and I think there better options,” said Gamawa.

https://hls.harvard.edu/today/honor-nelson-mandela-ever-violence-justifiable-struggles-political-social-change-video/

“Apartheid” refers to an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another.

‘https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/education/2024/03/understanding-the-long-roots-of-violence-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territories-and-israel/

ResearcherZero • April 4, 2024 5:50 AM

@echo

If we allow corrupt police officers to behave badly, along with others, it creates the kind of openings for bad actors to whittle away at the fabric of society. And harm innocent people of course, which then destroys people’s faith in institutions. That is the idea behind asymmetric warfare and grey-zone activities. Break down trust within communities.

Many operations by the GRU targeted marginalised groups, along with the well-heeled. The responses by government have been inadequate, and decades late. Just like their response to existing social issues and institutional dysfunction, white collar crime and corruption.

If you want to knock over a building, it’s always easier when there is rot in the foundations. Easier still if that rot spreads to other institutions because it was ignored.

All it takes is a little “dangerous hyperbolic fear mongering” and a few useful idiots.

‘https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-wisconsin-election-gaffe-rally-1234998233/

“I have been dismayed to see outright distortions and outright falsehoods creep into the public consciousness,” Judge Royce Lamberth said at the sentencing of Jan. 6 defendant James Little earlier this year. “I have been shocked to watch some public figures try to rewrite history.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judges-witnesses-jan-6-cases-warn-threats-to-democracy-2024-elections/

–

‘Severe operational security inconsistencies’. These guys did not practice good OpSec…

“This concern is not limited to innocent consumers and enterprises; a series of operational security failures call into question the integrity of their criminal enterprise and may even suggest some of their customers are also targets. Ironically, the most significant risk to Manipulaters’ customers might be the Manipulaters themselves.”

‘https://www.domaintools.com/resources/blog/the-resurgence-of-the-manipulaters-team-breaking-heartsenders/

Clive Robinson • April 4, 2024 6:10 AM

@ ResearcherZero,

Re : TBI AHI CTE by another name?

With regards the so called “AHI”[1] there are three aspects to it, two of which you note with,

“A $1 million medical bill is quite a high expense to cop. Especially [for] doing your job. Many top counter-intelligence agents working on issues dealing with Russia have been targeted.”

It’s actually likely to be way way higher than “$1 million” when you take into account the very very high probability of early onset dementia.

It’s a cost nobody wants to pick up so obfuscation by those with probable if not legal liability is the name of the game[2]. We see this with Millitary personnel over and over with multi-decade long fights for even meager compensation.

One reason that they can get away with “kicking it into the long grass” is lack of “in vivo” –in life– medical diagnostic tools[3] currently which is what the NFL legal people did with CTE. But increasing autopsy based findings are showing by probability that the “smoke” was from “fire burning through the brain”.

Thus the question arises,

“Is there any post attack medical treatment?”

The answer to which is “possibly” hence my link to the article on the use of SSRI antidepressants immediately after an insult to the brain.

But there is the other issue,

“Prevention is better than cure”

Especially when there is no cure. How to stop the attacks in the first place.

As I’ve remarked in the past the first stage is “instrumentation” for detection. Look on it the same way you would “smoke detectors” are the first stage in stopping potential arson. It gives a time point for which other instrumentation like CCTV and ANPR and cellphone record tracking etc can be correlated and coincidences found.

Then there is behavioural modification. It should become part of standard training much as fire drills are and the “don’t click on the link” cyber warnings.

Directed energy as I’ve indicated in the past has certain issues that make it problematic as a weapon not least of which is the energy at the operator end is many many times greater than it is at the target end and focusing radiation is an issue[4]. It’s a matter of physics and simple geometry for “single beam” systems. However the use of two beams during WWII showed how you could make a very fine beam pattern or better still with a longer base line a quite well defined small area[5].

[1] Part of the issue is that there are so many names being invented and used. For I suspect reasons of deliberately creating confusion. So we have,

1, AHI : Anomalous Health Incidents
2, TBI : Traumatic Brain Injury
3, CTE : Chronic traumatic encephalopathy

Of which only the third has actual science and medicine behind it currently and sadly can still only really be diagnosed by autopsy[2][3].

[2] But I’m not being a conspiracy theorist when I say “deliberately creating confusion” because we’ve seen it all before with the US NFL legal approach to TBI and CTE in American Football players, it’s a standard technique where known liability is being contested. What put the nail in it for the NFL was the increasing numbers of autopsies showing very high levels of CTE in NFL AF players at well over a 150 times that of the ordinary population,

https://www.bumc.bu.edu/camed/2023/02/06/researchers-find-cte-in-345-of-376-former-nfl-players-studied/

[3] OK this is a half decade old but it’s still one of the more readable medical research documents on CTE investigations that is not fire-walled,

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6018081/

[4] As I’ve mentioned before the use of ultrasonics in water tanks way back last century to make the equivalent of holograms led to the discovery that two beams that had frequency / phase differences similar to that of the neural system caused the operators to develop neurological conditions. This got investigated as an “area defense system” long before the term “Non-lethal Weapons” became vouge. It also got developed into a highly targeted version capable of targeting individuals in loosely crowded areas and could be singularly lethal. You can see the modern supposedly “non-lethal” version called “Long Range Acoustic Device”(LRAD) used on ships to prevent “piracy” etc (the difference being one beam and modulation being amplitude and well up in the auditory range). It’s taken a while at four decades but other publicly available information is catching up to what I’ve said here in the long past before AHI and earlier terms came into being,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon

Though they are still “getting it wrong” in various ways (“no proven” is an age old “kick into the long grass” trick that really means “deliberately not investigated”).

[5] As reported back from n 1973 in Prof R.V. Jones book “Most Secret War” the “Battle of the beams” to get “precision bombing” was carried out by both sides. In essence it’s like turning “Direction Finding” around and the “cocked hat” area can be quite small and precisely placed with just two beams that are inversely modulated (one with dots, one with dashes, where they cross the cocked hat single tone). As the very harmful AHI signal can be made of two otherwise harmless signals you can see how such LRAD’s can be made lethal.

echo • April 4, 2024 7:22 AM

@ResearcherZero

I do keep my eye on things. I am not underinformed. You will have to excuse me but I’m only one woman not an entire department and only have so much cognitive-emotional bandwidth and need my mental health breaks too.

Yes, I do believe we need to restructure things politically and socially and institutionally and so forth. Nobody takes me seriously when I mention Feminist Queer Marxist-Materialist theory but it’s just a discussion toy. Less neo-liberalism and more investment in civic structures has more broader appeal. There’s think chat chatter in this kind of zone and really it’s not too far removed from the hoped for mainstream human rights and foreign policy drift before the Tories turned mental. There is a problem with legacy structures which keep enabling authoritarianism. I can roll with a robust military defence posture but certainly the emphasis needs a rethink so safe stable societies become the norm so the possibility of more silliness is reduced. Anyway, that’s just a rough cross cut of where my thinking is at. It’s not a manifesto or plan but certainly the kind of thing which is occupying more minds than just mine.

I just bought two pairs of differently themed Pride earrings. That would get me coded as a terrorist in Russia and arrested. I mean, how thin skinned and insecure do you have to be to have a policy like that?

For what it’s worth I made another donation to the Ukraine cause. It’s not a lot but if it brings some cheer it all helps.

&ers • April 4, 2024 7:37 AM

@ALL

*** MASSIVE DATA LEAK IN ESTONIA ***

hxxps://news.err.ee/1609302096/cybercriminals-steal-data-of-around-700-000-apotheka-pharmacy-customers

Clive Robinson • April 4, 2024 10:05 AM

@ &ers, ALL,

Re : Estonia data leak

“*** MASSIVE DATA LEAK IN ESTONIA ***”

Only 700,000 customers?

Compared to some that is a drop in the lake.

But it does raise a question

“Why Estonia Again?”

That is how come we are hearing about it.

I suspect it’s because Estonia has a higher level of “Social Responsibility” to “persons natural” compared to other places like the US which appear to just push “Individual Rights” by “persons legal”.

Hundreds of years ago Europe took a very bad turn when it started turning “letters of patent” into companies that had equivalent rights as “persons natural” but without any of the liabilities falling on the “persons natural” hiding behind the “persons legal” that companies had become.

I’m thinking it is time we took away quite a few of those cut outs not just directors but shareholders hide behind so they are forced to face “Social Responsibility”.

Clive Robinson • April 4, 2024 11:27 AM

@ ResearcherZero, The approaching future,

Re : Careful what you claim

Did you actually stop and think before you typed,

“Clearly you have little experience, and zero military or intelligence experience to base your assumptions on. London is one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world.”

You are obviously regurgitating fairly useless “factoids” about London you’ve heard somewhere.

And are certainly not an ordinary resident, or for that matter a security researcher, or person with intelligence experience who has thought about London or been in rezidence there from a foreign government.

As I’ve mentioned before most of the supposed surveillance in London and the South East of England is only really of use for “revenue raising” and dealing with opportunistic criminals, trouble makers, and drunks etc. It covers main roads and thoroughfares, trains, busses, shopping areas and some but by no means all carparks..

Oh and of the Russians who met untimely deaths, look at a map… The ones mentioned did not happen in London. The one in Clarance Avenue New Malden you could drive a car up one end past Kingston Hospital and over the A3 into Raynes Park, likewise the other end or many of the side roads off of it. From Raynes Park you can again without being on cameras get all the way to Croyden, then up into Greenwich or just about anywhere else where you could step unseen onto a boat and be out to sea without let or hindrance. I know because in the past I’ve oft traveled that way for recreation and sailed with friends to France.

The reason the piss poor Met Police were involved is that the UK Home Office under a certain very useless Tory Politician who for a short time was Prime Minister had decided for cost saving reasons to centralise Anti-Terror etc.

The fact that a succession of useless Tory politicians with delusions of self importance have passed through the Home Office like grease through a goose making exactly the same mistakes over and over should ring a little bell. Certainly the succession of lost court cases they have suffered should tell you more.

But from a practical point of view whilst you might not be able to get a lorry from Europe to Central London, I certainly can get me from Africa to Central London without being stopped, checked or even seen on the supposed heaviest surveillance wide area surveillance system in the world.

As I’ve repeatedly said it’s a system that in the main has been put in place to raise revenue by taxation and fines, not for security.

Thus getting past it all from some small port, harbour, or beach is fairly trivial.

If you don’t believe this then read up on just how many illegal immigrants are doing it every month, and going on to become “workers” for Contract Cleaners and the like.

In the past I’ve mentioned how an entire major hospital (Kingston) got effectively shut down when the immigration authorities turned up one Thursday and so many of the ISS contract cleaners had to be taken away it caused transport issues…

To see how “organised” it was have a look at this follow up article that tells a little of the illegal immigrant structure,

https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/4754575.more-arrests-in-kingston-hospital-blackmail-investigation/

I can also tell you that similar happened with Nurses at Tolworth Hospital as well because a friend who worked at both hospitals spotted one person using ID at one hospital was a different person at the other hospital even though the same ID was used…

Trust me when I say the supposed surveillance in London is from a security aspect fairly pointless. It’s even mostly pointless for Policing look up “steaming gangs” that rob people infront of well marked CCTV cameras on trains and young mugging gangs in town centers absolutely bristling with CCTV and the like.

But you do anything that can be easily fined by computer then expect an envelope in the post…

&ers • April 4, 2024 11:35 AM

@Sir Clive

You are forgetting how small we are 🙂

hxxps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Estonia

700000 is half of our population, so for us this is huge.

But the second question is more serious. Estonian govt advertises
our country as an “advanced cybersecurity country”.

hxxps://e-estonia.com/estonia-outranks-most-of-the-world-in-global-cybersecurity-index/

And i know personally that there is a government order to hide serious
cyber incidents in govt sector to keep our “cybersecurity image” high.

Is our image just a front?

echo • April 4, 2024 4:38 PM

Is our image just a front?

It’s a large club. Welcome.

I must admit I was a little surprised by this breach but then Estonia has worked with GCHQ recently which might indicate a skill-capacity thing. I’m guessing you have a few very capable people but Estonia is a small country and there’s only so much you can do in one go and accidents happen.

It is a touch embarrassing but the UK has had its slip ups. That or we’re better at leaning on newspaper editors over lunch and fixing it before anyone notices!

echo • April 4, 2024 5:24 PM

Trust me when I say the supposed surveillance in London is from a security aspect fairly pointless. It’s even mostly pointless for Policing look up “steaming gangs” that rob people infront of well marked CCTV cameras on trains and young mugging gangs in town centers absolutely bristling with CCTV and the like.

Some years ago a young French woman had her handbag snatched outside of my house. I brought her inside to use my phone and gave her an optional cup of tea with lots of sugar while she waited for the police to arrive. She was bothered about her handbag but I told her they just wanted her money and there was no point chasing after them in case it escalated. I also told her and the police where they would find the handbag. The snatcher just wanted the money and would likely want to escape to a place where they would be able to extract the money and dump the handbag without anyone seeing. Like, any average snatcher is going to find a woman’s handbag and contents apart from money of any value? That narrowed down to two local possibilities. I suggested both but indicated it was likely to be one of the two.

A few weeks or maybe some months later I read in a local newspaper article discussing crime with the police and they just happened to mention an incident where through the powers of gimlet eyed policing they had recovered a handbag from that very spot and returned it to the owner. Of course they took all the credit. Hmmm.

The funny thing is my favourite everyday handbag and purse are worth more than what’s normally in them. Replacing them would be a real pain and I’d be more annoyed if I lost them than any money. They can have the money. And if I’m wearing my Cartier knock-off it’s worth less than the watch strap so knock yourself out.

If things are rough anywhere I might travel I’ve got concealed money-document pouches. I could always buy or make a thigh holster to wear under a skirt for carrying a phone or money, or alter a skirt so it has pockets of either the built in variety or slits going to separate tied on pockets as they used to have back in the day which is where the term “pockets” came from. Crikey. You could stuff a shop down those.

lurker • April 4, 2024 6:38 PM

@Clive Robinsob
re getting from Africa to Central London

When Neddie delivered Mr. Henry Crun’s telephone to 12A Africa, he got there along the Finchley Rd, eventually.

‘https://archive.org/details/TheGoonShow1950to1960

JonKnowsNothing • April 4, 2024 6:51 PM

@All

re: Update on my Medical Clawback

recap:

I take a very expensive oncology drug $5,000 USD per month discounted. For the past several years I’ve been included for 100% medical assistance program that pays for my drugs and medical care. These programs are required for health care organizations that get money from Medicare or Medicaid (USA)

This year my award is 50% of coverage. I have an appeal pending.

Today I had an interesting exchange with folks at the health care organization. So far my appeal is DUNNO and I have ~1 week left of medication.

The CLAWBACK calculation is a bit different than I first figured. Of course it is worse for me by design.

  • Gross monthly income: $2688.70 USD
  • Federal Medicare monthly premium: $174.70 USD
  • Net monthly income: $2514.00 USD
  • Health care organization monthly premium: $91.00 USD
  • Federal Poverty Index for 100% coverage: under $2510.00 USD
  • Federal Poverty Index for 50% coverage: over $2510.00 USD

According to today’s conversation, the index is based on the Gross Amount. The deductions for medical insurance are omitted (174+91) and are counted effectively as income even though these are required medical premiums.

  • $2688.70 is over the upper ceiling of $2510.00

Any extra purchases made, such as over the counter medications (1), eye glasses, hearing aids, dentures, dental procedures also count against you, even though they are included in the $91/month medical plan. Buying eye glasses is considered “optional expenditure” and getting a tooth pulled is “discretionary unnecessary use of funds”.

I don’t have a definitive list at hand but some expenses from last year:

  • I bought eye glasses on the program offered + $50 out of pocket. est: $450 + 50 = $500 tacked on to gross income

  • I had 2 teeth pulled under the dental offering, which was a nightmare of misapplied billing codes and various bill-stuffing charges. est: $500 extractions + $200 bill stuffing. $700 tacked on to gross income.

So now my new medical benefit income level is

  • 2688.70 + 91 + 500 + 700 = 3,979.70

At ~$4,000 USD of “disposable” income, it is not looking good for getting medical care cost relief anytime soon.

Also of interest, per the CSR, this is the first year they have tried a 50% CLAWBACK level of support cost. It is “causing a lot of problems”.

For me it is functionally a 100% CLAWBACK.

Even at 50% of drug cost, even with a drug discount, the drug would cost more than my net income per month. It is in effect a 100% denial because I could not afford any of the supporting medical care needed or pay for generic living needs.

  • CSR: Some medical costs would only be $5-$20 USD

  • Moi: $5 buys me a loaf of bread. I might die without my drugs, but I will certainly die sooner if I don’t buy food.

===

1) Many Rx drugs are now OTC only. Buying MD recommended OTC medications is an unnecessary expense for the purposes of this calculation.

Clive Robinson • April 4, 2024 7:38 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing, ALL,

Re : It’s about to get more expensive.

“$5 buys me a loaf of bread.”

Good grief, where I live there are four different supermarkets where you can buy a 900g/2lb loaf which in theory gives you most of your nutrition for two days for £0.45 at it’s lowest for “white sliced”. Yes they want you to buy the fancy seeded bread at over three times the price, but you would be financially better of buying a bag of mixed seed at a health shop and mixing with plain yogurt and adding to a bowl of oatmeal.

Now for the bad news… I’ve been told by a friend who lives in that part of the US that a major producer of eggs in the US in Texas has just had to slaughter just under 2million chickens due to “avian flu”. With an expected supply chain knock on of a 50% or more rise on “in shell eggs” to be expected…

How they get the loss of 10,000,000 or less eggs a week to rise the price of eggs that much I don’t know…

So I’m sensing “disaster capitalism” at work, to significantly increase profit on an improbable excuse.

The only corroboration I could find is,

https://eu.courier-journal.com/story/news/2024/04/04/bird-flu-texas-how-bird-flu-outbreak-will-influence-egg-prices-grocery-costs-in-kentucky/73202821007/

(They use different lay figures at 5/week 250/year not the 6 / 300 I know from experience with lay hens in their first year.

ResearcherZero • April 4, 2024 10:25 PM

@Clive Robinson

Spies and their movements are heavily monitored. The police however are somewhat untrained and slow on the uptake. They struggle with even simple occurrences and concepts.

Introduce even simple obfuscation, a hat, glasses or wig, and they no longer can follow either the conversation or the target. At that point it becomes too hard to comprehend.

Not all. Yet enough that they struggle to collect any evidence of substance, or handle it in a manner satisfactory for investigation. And then perhaps, one day, prosecution.

–

“Essentially we do get complaints, we do receive allegations, but we need something concrete or tangible or a lead to be able to pursue our work.”

The commissioner of Canada Elections, is hampered in its ability to investigate complaints related to foreign interference.

The inquiry heard how the commissioner’s office faces gaps in both resources and knowledge.

“The OCCE faces a steep learning curve with each new country that engages in foreign interference. Building and maintaining internal expertise on all potential hostile foreign actors is not feasible, given the size of the OCCE and its current employee complement,” says the summary document.

‘https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/otoole-foreign-interference-inquiry-1.7161989

How to balance the desire for public access with the need to keep intelligence secure…

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/03/world/canada/china-election-interference.html

–

Out-of-date act governing the Canadian Security Intelligence Service

  • possible targets are often left in the dark.

Such laws are not only important for charging and convicting culprits, but can also help educate the public and deter other nations from interfering.

While the inquiry will focus on claims of election interference by China, Russia, India “and other foreign actors”, experts say the problem of foreign meddling in Canada is much more complex and widespread. The nation’s primary intelligence agency has been limited in its operations, focused on sharing information solely with the federal government.

Solving it, they say, demands a restructuring of the political and social DNA of the country, which has long-failed to prioritise matters of national security.

‘https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68038175

Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, Conservative MP Michael Chong and New Democrat MP Jenny Kwan have all been identified publicly as possible targets.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/no-criminal-probes-into-foreign-meddling-during-last-two-general-elections-rcmp-boss-1.6833689

incommunicado

“O’Toole was asked if he personally flagged the information to SITE. He said he did not.”

O’Toole said Walied Soliman, the Conservative campaign co-chair for the 2021 election and the designate to the task force, was responsible for doing that. The former leader said he did not direct Soliman to relay the information and assumed he had done so, and did not ask him afterwards if the information had been communicated to the task force.

‘https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/04/03/news/each-vote-matters-erin-otoole-tells-foreign-interference-inquiry

ResearcherZero • April 4, 2024 10:46 PM

“It is better to stop something bad from happening than it is to deal with it after it has happened,” -Generally attributed to the Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus in around 1500, it’s not exactly a radical new concept.

“If some dispute arises between princes, why do they not take it to arbitration instead [of waging war],” Erasmus asks. “At the Nativity of Christ, the angels sang not the glories of war, nor a song of triumph, but a hymn of peace.”

‘https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/erasmus/

“My current task is more logical than your emotional turmoil,” said the Vulcan.

“Just pass me the med-kit,” quipped the bleeding bomb disposal expert in response. “And be quick about it, or we will both go up together while arguing how best to disable the bomb.”

ResearcherZero • April 5, 2024 12:21 AM

@Clive

Re: TBI AHI CTE by another name?

Ignoring the problem of Russian attacks on intelligence personnel for the last 30 years has worked fine. Ignoring the reports and the briefings they deliver has also gone swimmingly.

Why worry when you can engage in cheap populism and simple distractions to divert public attention? If politicians then get themselves in trouble, then the service can save them.

Or so I have been told by PEPs. Though I am pretty busy and I have a holiday coming up.

–

‘https://www.afr.com/world/middle-east/on-nato-s-75th-birthday-old-certainties-are-gone-20240405-p5fhmf

Discussing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at a NATO conference.
https://apnews.com/article/havana-syndrome-russia-cuba-vilnius-4839ec0e3ce0db76670832235d602a16

–

“Hey! Be Careful. You are about to walk off a cliff!”

“My name is not Cliff buddyeeeeeeeeee…”

(Don’t worry. There are flood waters below.)

‘https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/05/chequebook-journalism-is-nothing-new-but-allegations-in-court-about-spotlights-practices-have-left-insiders-gobsmacked

unethical
https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2023/should-journalists-pay-sources/

Money can distort the truth, that’s the blunt truth of it…

“The other danger is that it makes everyone else who’s got a story have exaggerated ideas of what they can possibly get from the media and that’s bad for the news climate.”

(great news for grifters, scumbags, fools, creeps, perverts, and d–kwads)

‘https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/it-s-just-a-lot-of-money-the-hazy-ethics-of-chequebook-journalism-20220206-p59u4e.html

–

This happens all the time unfortunately. Educating politicians and the public:

“People just do it, very sensible people drive into flood waters, I don’t think they set out to get stuck but it can happen so easily.”

‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-05/nsw-queensland-wet-weather-forecast-flood-warning-live-update/103670440

Floods have already hit Queensland’s south and flood watch alerts are in place for much of Australia’s east coast.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/04/heavy-rain-and-flash-flooding-possible-for-nsw-and-queensland-as-weather-systems-collide

Clive Robinson • April 5, 2024 1:34 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

A bit of a weird fraud story from Italy,

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-arrests-22-seizes-millions-eu-fund-fraud-case-2024-04-04/

On the face of it, it’s just another high value fraud in a country where such things have been indicated to happen a number of times over the years.

However some sources are saying it is very “high-tech” involving AI, Bitcoin, VPN’s, Hostile or non cooperating Nations, etc.

At the moment details are at best scant or hidden behind paywalls such as the once British “pink-un” Financial Times.

The idea of deliberately using hostile / non cooperating nations was discussed on this blog a long time ago, as far as I’m aware back then it was the first time seen in detail in public. @Nick P and myself looked at it as a way to protect yourself from intrusive legislation like the UK RIPA and courts trying to force disclosure of encryption keys.

Clive Robinson • April 5, 2024 2:07 AM

What’s CLT got to do with UTC

The Whitehouse has finally got into Time Travel 😉

https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2024/04/02/white-house-office-of-science-and-technology-policy-releases-celestial-time-standardization-policy/

It’s a subject I’ve talked about occasionally on this blog, but lightly, is the security implications of time on computers and where the computer is relative to another computer how fast it is moving etc[1]

In short even on Earth “Relativity Matters”, but mostly in human terms it’s not something we consider.

Well if we “Go back to the Moon” or “Go to Mars” Earth’s centric time systems like UTC won’t work.

Thus we have to consider how we deal with it.

On the face of it we could just say something like “lets use Sun time and reference everything from that” only it is not sufficiently stable. The Sun’s position changes with the orbits of the gas giants, thus both speeds up and slows down. We need some standardised solar system time that works for every object in our solar system. Every one/thing then calculates it’s own “local time” from that… But that causes other quaint issues.

It will be interesting to see how NASA and others decide a basic framework.

What ever it is, it’s almost guaranteed to have security issues, because we’ve not thought about time properly in the past hundred years.

[1] Consider for instance military data networks with air, land, and sea forces all moving and at very different rates. And how you deal with security issues such as when orders are issued and even in which order and how you deal with spoofing and replay attacks. Many protocols assume you can “count on time” when in fact you can not.

ResearcherZero • April 5, 2024 2:23 AM

I love the FT and it’s massive paywall, sounds more lurid than I expected.

“The suspects transferred the funds to their bank accounts in Austria, Romania and Slovakia as soon as they received the advance payments,” the EPPO said.

An accountant suspected of involvement in the complex fraud had also been barred from practising. Over 100 suspicious financial transactions had been investigated.

…

European police seize Lamborghinis and Rolexes over alleged $650M Covid-19 fraud.

‘https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/04/europe/eu-police-covid-fraud-italy-rolex-lamborghini-intl/index.html

“allegedly used false corporate balance sheets as they applied for non-repayable grants to support fictitious small and medium-size companies expanding to foreign markets”

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/police-arrest-22-eu-raids-linked-suspected-theft-108846909

Clive Robinson • April 5, 2024 2:49 AM

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

Re : Why we drive into trouble.

“People just do it, very sensible people drive into flood waters, I don’t think they set out to get stuck but it can happen so easily.”

It’s because experienced drivers nolonger drive by conscious thinking but by subconscious action.

When we learn a skill it initially takes a lot of mental effort and significantly occupies the conscious mind.

As our abilities improve the skill moves from the conscious mind to the subconscious mind. Essentially it’s “pre-programmed responses” and they are hundreds of milliseconds faster so we appear more skilled.

Part of this is familiarity we drove down the same roads every day, we see puddles and the like so regularly we have preprogrammed responses. We are thus not actively thinking so when a “bit of water” appears do we think,

“Puddle or fast flowing cross stream?”

Actually neither, we just respond subconsciously as “puddle”, by the time our conscious mind realises “cross stream” it’s way to late, and almost invariably we do the wrong thing like “hit the breaks” rather than “manage momentum”.

We forget that,

“A skilled person is a dangerous person because they really do not think.”

But another issue is lack of experience, ask yourself,

“How dangerous is two inches of water?”

The answer is “It depends” I’ve been knocked off my feet by that little amount of water moving at around 10kph. When you work out the force it exerts on the side of your foot you realise why. But with no practical experience built up we rely on what we’ve incorrectly / not learnt and we get into trouble.

Whilst this might appear “obvious” with water, the same issues apply in most of every other thing we do in life. Sometimes it amazes me we still exist as a species because “Homo Techtus” mobile phone in hand is really is not safe to be let out the front door.

ResearcherZero • April 5, 2024 3:50 AM

I had to chase my father in two inches of water across a paddock and rescue him, and some friends who were almost washed from a spillway almost into rock laden river whirlpools.

Two inches of fast moving water are pretty dangerous. Pulled a few folks out from river crossings. Their new 4WD’s did not fair as well as they did.

Pulled out a few dead floaters, some intact. One had been there too long, perhaps weeks.

–

CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 (authentication bypass and command injection)

A web shell written in Perl embedded into a legitimate Connect Secure .ttc (setcookie)

“China-nexus threat actors aggressively utilizing zero-day and N-day vulnerabilities to enable their operations and target organizations across the globe.”

‘https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/ivanti-post-exploitation-lateral-movement

readme

‘https://forums.ivanti.com/s/article/KB-CVE-2023-46805-Authentication-Bypass-CVE-2024-21887-Command-Injection-for-Ivanti-Connect-Secure-and-Ivanti-Policy-Secure-Gateways

ResearcherZero • April 5, 2024 5:28 AM

@Clive

It’s quiet here, and also relaxing, picturesque and remote. It is a beautiful spot to die.

Clive Robinson • April 5, 2024 3:00 PM

@ ALL in New Jersey USA,

According to an Earthquake tracker site, today was about normal activity and magnitude wise.

But one stood out,

“Magnitude 4.8 Earthquake Hunterdon County, New Jersey, United States”

I suspect that rattled more than a couple of roof tiles so I had a quick “quack-quack-dash” for “non-firewalled” news sites and found,

https://www.phillyvoice.com/earthquake-philly-new-jersey-usgs-47-magnitude/

So originally reported as 4.7 and revised upward and epicenter likewise updated, which is not that surprising at that low a magnitude in “older East US”.

Any from around there reading this care to give an inside view?

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