Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • January 21, 2013 7:19 PM

@ Brilliant,

Red October malware

Whilst it does appear to go for cryptofiiler systems you left out the bit that made me smile.

As I and one or two others have mentioned on this blog before USB Thumb Drives / memory sticks use low write cycle flash ROM to store files.

And because of the low number of write cycles, then the manufactures of these USB memory devices use a round robin method with memory page usage to make their “wear leveling algorithms”.

As I’ve noted in the past (with “war on photogrophy” and the police deleatiing photos on digital cameras) deleting on such solid state memory does not mean actually deleating or even overwrighting the file, so a knowledgable person can undelete the files fairly simply.

Well that’s what the authors of this Red October malware appear to have done, that is the code recovers deleted files of of Flash memory and sends that as well.

So chalk another one up to you “Heard it on Bruce’s Blog First”.

I wonder how long it will be before Bruce’s blog gets banned for subversive activities, or even conspiracy to commit a crime etc 😉

Clive Robinson • January 21, 2013 7:35 PM

@ Figureitout,

I have this idea about audible sensors and a pebble-field-moat, would noise-canceling be an attack

Agh the old “gravel crunch alarm” or even earliar “Canary squeak floor” which reputadly was used by Ming Dynasty and earlier Emperors several thousand years ago.

The idea is that it attracts the atttention of a guard or guard dog and then they raise the alarm.

If it was me these days I would put vibration or preasure sensors in amongst the peddles/gravel and tune it via DSP for the maximum sensitivity in the audio bands of interest.

As for “Noise Cancelling” in the general case it’s a very hard problem, which is why it’s only realy available for headphones and microphones.

The issue is ‘sound originates sphericaly from a point’, and thus to cancell over an area the size of a small field requires a lot of knowledge of where a targets ears are and the ability to provide wave forms that cancell out the sound (try drawing it on graph paper to see why).

Clive Robinson • January 24, 2013 8:41 AM

OFF Topic:

I’m not sure that I should post this as viewed even from a short distance it discriminates by sex, which could cause adverse comments from both sides.

However it can be argued that it is a social good trying to level the playing field,

http://addxorrol.blogspot.de/2013/01/encouraging-female-reverse-engineers.html

Whilst I would activly encorage people to participate, I’ve witnessed many such schemes in science and engineering in the past and been involved with some, and unfortunatly. in general they have been either counter productive or of at best of negligable effect.

I thus feel that I need to explain why I think this happens not just in my own defence, but because I think we are aiming in the wrong place to resolve the issue.

I personaly feel the reason for the gender imbalance in engeneering is perhaps more deep routed in societal norms than many think and thus “quick fix” schemes probably won’t work.

Back in the 1940’s and 50’s girls were raised with the expectation of being “homemakers” and even in the 1960’s classes in non grammer schools certainly gave the indication that boys were trades people doing wood/metal working whilst the girls did “home economics” with the ideal of “The well cooked baked bean on toast for your childrens tea” being the hight of prudent womanhood, closely followed by the “pipe and slippers placed lovingly for the old man when he returned from a tyring day at the office” etc…

This gender bias was very clearly seen in childrens toys and books that featured strongly in their early development (luckily most “tech toys” are now about as genderless as you can get).

Thankfully attitudes in education started to change in the 1970’s and in the 1980’s I was involved with a number of similar schemes to get girls/women to consider engineering as a viable life long vocation (oddly perhaps Maggie Thatcher helped not just as a role model but also by destroying traditional male industries such as minimg and shipbuilding in her efforts to destroy unions, giving families no choice but for women to go and work in factories and light engineering).

However any improvment was against considerable resistance of the old guard in education many of whom were women themselves and considered it to be “blue collar” work not fit for well educated women (but nursing etc was…).

I had hoped in the early 1990’s that we were on the road to change, however the old guard were still fighting through the next generation. One such “politicaly correct” complaint was, that it was the words used in engineering such as “grease nipple” and “bugs” that put women off (seriously such stuff was printed in the Times Newspaper in the UK). Actualy to us “at the coal face” it appeared to be that it was more likely the lack of money, uncomftable work conditions and discrimination from other women not the words.

Even with the significant changes in the late 90’s and early 00’s with the standards of pay and conditions improving dramatical women were still not that interested in engineering. At this time it was blaimed on the “nerd culture” but as I knew from a number of close lady friends who worked in engineering, they did not talk about what they did socialy because they felt “stigmatised” by their female contemporaries, who had chosen accountancy, law and marketing and “did things in the city” (which was and still is a horrendously sexsist place to work).

And it was interesting to note that infact when “trade wages” rose to above the equivalent of 100,000USD per annum quite a few “city women” re-trained to become plumbers, carpenters, decorators and associated trades as well as designers of homes, offices and gardens and landscapes. With a considerable contingent moving into “country skills and trades”. In effect becoming their own business women in the process with many becoming employers in their own right.

Of more recent times it feels like we are actually going backwards in womens attitudes to engineering, you actually get a strong feeling it’s regarded by many as not just as “unproffessional” work but something done by “social rejects”, “women of a certain type” and those “dispicable forigners” in China and third world countries (yes I’ve actualy heard these words and worse, and why socialy I call myself a consultant not an engineer)…

Perhaps it is a prime example of Lexical Degregation of a needed proffession by the “chattering classes” (yes even in the UK manufacturing especialy in engineering still contributes considerably more to the national wealth than all the various finance sectors combined).

Thankfully though science is fairing better in this respect so hopefully changed attitudes in that area will “rub off” onto engineering.