Comments
name.withheld.for.obvious.reasons • October 15, 2021 4:35 PM
15 Oct 2021 — Facebook; Information labeled Misleading, Misleadingly
After several reports concerning information that, for example I posted to this blog about myopericarditis in mRNA vaccines, was labeled misleading by Facebook which was found to have been so without substantiation or a thorough process.
Three researches have continued an analysis of the paper I mentioned and have determined through their own efforts that indeed mRNA injections without aspiration is problematic. Not only that, the ChAdOx1 nCov-19 improperly administered also leads to problems after injection non-inter-muscularly. Research results and papers are published on the bioRxiv website at hs ptt://www.biorxiv.org/
The three separate scientists have commented on their findings, of interest as they all come to the same conclusion, is the work of:
Leo Nicolai, Cardiology Fellow, Ludwig Maximailian University of Munich
SpaceLifeForm • October 15, 2021 5:27 PM
@ Kyle Hutson
Thank you for paying attention.
Check prior squid. I just pointed to some very interesting information.
Nick Levinson • October 15, 2021 9:45 PM
Software may retain passwords in plain text, so that a search inside an app’s files may reveal passwords that work.
This is because users may err and type a password where a username should be typed because they mentally accidentally skip the username step. The app may legitimately be designed to log usernames and usually those can legitimately be in plaintext. But a user’s error may result in a password being stored as if it is a username. It wouldn’t directly reveal the password’s owner, but, because a login would have failed and likely retried, the owner could be guessed from the chronologically next entry or other adjacent entries.
I found this in security software maybe a couple of decades ago. I don’t remember if the logging feature was documented, if it could be disabled, or if removing an offending entry (e.g., replacing it with a string of the same length) could damage the installed app.
I have sometimes run a disk editor to do a whole-disk search for a distinct part of a password, thereby not risking storing a full password as plaintext. I never found a match, fortunately.
Weather • October 16, 2021 2:25 AM
@all
Can people stop quote refences with out saying what they think of it… And yes Wikipedia is as accurate as a blind donkey.
@mod
Abit agro but people are stepping out side there area.
SpaceLifeForm • October 16, 2021 2:48 AM
I remain confident that most ransomware attacks are really a cover story for blackmail payments and/or money laundering.
hxtps://therecord.media/treasury-said-it-tied-5-2-billion-in-btc-transactions-to-ransomware-payments/
While the initial SAR reports highlighted $1.56 billion in suspicious activity, a subsequent FinCEN investigation of the Top 10 most common ransomware variants exposed additional transactions, amounting to around $5.2 billion just from these groups alone.
Winter • October 16, 2021 10:04 AM
@SLF
“I remain confident that most ransomware attacks are really a cover story for blackmail payments and/or money laundering.”
We had a university in the Netherlands, Maastricht, which was closed for weeks because they lost access to all their (student) data in a ransomware attack. Just now one of the biggest industrial conglomerates of the Netherlands was closed for weeks for the same reason.
I see no angle in money laundering here.
And if you look at these Russian guys with license plates that literally say Thief in Russian, I have no trouble believing this ransomware thing is a big industry.
ht tps://www.riskint.blog/post/tracking-evil-corp-s-cars
JonKnowsNothing • October 16, 2021 10:46 AM
@All
A recent MSM report about a mass distributed email from a major corporation to their employees, one of those SENDALLs. The topic was an solicitation for the receiver to “CLICK HERE” to support a corporate position, that is for the most part not in the best interest of the employees.
The “CLICK HERE” would send an affirmation “YES I AGREE” to some committee to use as that ever popular position: “SEE our employees agree with US”.
Down at the bottom of the email was the disclaimer
Your participation is voluntary and not a condition of employment
There were some very interesting aspects to this blast from on high.
- Click Bait – after trying to get people to stop clicking links they do not know where they come from or where they go from stuff appearing in your inbox who’s provenance you cannot verify, the company sabotaged their own efforts to stop unexpected intrusions. Just because it says it’s from corporate, doesn’t make it so.
- Full company SENDALL emailing. It’s very large company with more than 100,000 employees. Rather staggering use of their inboxes, that due to the nature of the company are already overflowing. The SENDALL is no doubt pulling the listing from some email server. They likely have ample bandwidth within their system to blast 100,000+ spam messages internally. It still needs to be setup and most systems have some block to prevent an accidental event. Still the list has to be read and the message populated and then passed along one or more transit lines. A good listening post along the pathway might harvest the SENDTO names. Paired with some other public or non public data this may have other uses. In past times, people that worked for the IRS or other similar taxing authorities were told to keep their employer secret to avoid unfortunate encounters at the supermarket.
- The CLICK HERE vs NO CLICK REQUIRED. I might suppose, that if I wanted to send such a solicitation, I would like to know the acceptance rate. Mass marketing generally has a low direct return rate and a higher indirect return. If you know the starting value and the number of returns you also know the number of NOOPs. If you know the names on the list and you have the names of the ACCEPTS; you also know the names of the NOOPs. With email systems often a VERIFY READ flag tags who has read or not read the message. Given the starting numbers, the number of acceptances and the number of NOOPS with READ-YES flags you have a good list of employees who did not accommodate the corporation’s proposal.
- Your participation is voluntary. The latest round of voice-spam starts with “Hi I’m (Female-Name/Female-Synth-Voice) from SOMECO. How are you today?” They no doubt get a fair number of folks to reply to the robot-call using that question. It’s similar to long time ploy by health insurance companies when they call to follow up after you file a claim for expensive health care (USA). The “How are you?” question is normally responded to by an automatic polite reply of “I’m fine and you?” at which point the health insurance closes your case because you told them “you were fine” which leads down a nasty RATHOLE when you attempt to dig your way back.
- Not a condition of employment. Hardly likely. CLICK or NOCLICK, you are on some list somewhere, with folks who you don’t know and have no way to find out what they are doing with your name. It may not be a condition today but tomorrow is another question. There are always sanctioned layoffs for restructuring with many names are on the list. It could be a list of NOCLICKs or a list of CLICKs. Housekeeping doesn’t really care which one.
As, Mma Makutsi would say “That is very well known…”
===
Partial Search Title:
- rizon Asks Employees to Help Kill Corporate Tax
Sut Vachz • October 16, 2021 10:46 AM
A 2800 foot squid ! Now that is big.
Clive Robinson • October 16, 2021 10:56 AM
@ Sut Vachz, Bruce, ALL,
A 2800 foot squid ! Now that is big.
Don’t you just love English, it is so delightfully ambiguous 😉
echo • October 16, 2021 2:31 PM
Note: I am using a new email address as a unique private identifier as I very helpfully deleted my old one by accident.
https://www.davidputtnam.com/viewNews/n/lord-puttnam-retirement-full-speech/
An ‘Elections Bill’ that, contrary to the advice of the Committee for Standards in Public Life, is set on undermining our long established independent ‘Electoral Commission’; a Bill to reform Judicial Review whose principal aim is to reduce the role of the Judiciary; a Police Bill that weakens the right to legal protest; along with a plan to ‘widen the scope of the Official Secrets Act’ with no commitment to add a public interest defence for journalists – even an Education Bill that seeks to reduce traditional academic freedoms in the area of Teacher Training! All of this accompanied by continued mutterings about ‘unelected judges’ in Strasbourg, and ‘reforming’ the UK’s implementation of the European Human Rights Act, potentially forcing us out of the Council of Europe.
And with every passing month there are more – each of them setting out to chip away at and undermine much of what defines an active liberal democracy: those institutions that might act as checks and balances on a populist government that’s trampling on long held rights and conventions, with the sole purpose of tightening its own grip on power.
This is a sample from David Putnnam’s resignation letter. He’s much more polite about things than I am!
lick it & stick it is my favorite hobby.
just lick it and stick it – it’s fun, it’s free and it may brighten your day too!
SpaceLifeForm • October 16, 2021 6:45 PM
@ Winter
Note that I said ‘most’.
There has to be actual ransomware attacks in order to hide the signal inside the noise.
SpaceLifeForm • October 16, 2021 7:07 PM
@ JonKnowsNothing
Reminds me of a corporate phishing training exercise not too long ago.
Corporate sent an email to all employees that was from a slightly obfuscated fake domain with a survey. Some bit.
The employees learned a lesson about phishing.
Weeks later, corporate sent out a legit email to all employees with a survey.
They were surprised that few responded.
Nick Levinson • October 17, 2021 2:00 AM
@Sut Vachz, @Clive Robinson:
The squid wasn’t 2800 feet and Bruce didn’t say it was. The squid was at a depth of nearly 2800 feet. The squid itself was big among squids, but not half-a-mile big.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/giant-mysterious-sea-creature-left-212625325.html
Clive Robinson • October 17, 2021 4:26 AM
@ Nick Levinson, Sut Vachz,
The squid wasn’t 2800 feet and Bruce didn’t say it was.
What @Bruce said was,
“New video of a large squid in the Red Sea at about 2,800 feet.”
Which is as ambiguous as the famous,
“At the circus I saw a man eating sandwich”
The sentance @Bruce gives has two –potentially three– objects,
1, Squid
2, Red Sea
And an unspecified attribute of “2,800 feet”
For the meaning of what @Bruce said to become a little clearer an additional word at the very least needs adding at the end of the sentance. Such as,
1, Long
2, Deep
3, Range
4, Distance
5, Drooping
Are potential options, but the first two words are again ambiguous and could apply to either object. That is a sea can be both long and deep” as can the squid. Likewise “feet” is ambiguous being both a measure of distance and limbs found on the end of other limbs such as legs etc.
Thus @Sut Vachz and my comments were gentle leg pulls…
echo • October 17, 2021 7:36 AM
Dominic Raab: I’ll overhaul the Human Rights Act to stop Strasbourg dictating to us.
Before the UK supreme court was created the House of Lords was the Supreme Court and could overrule decisions made on the authority of parliament. When the Supreme Court was created there was a slight of hand which placed the Supreme Court in a secondary position to parliament. The current UK government wants to rig the legal system even more in its favour.
I my opinion the biggest problem the Tory government have had from the courts isn’t because the courts were being difficult. It was because legislation was’t crafted properly. As many suppose it is not unreasonable to believe this government has another agenda. Speculation for some time is this goverment want to leave the European Convention. Whether they will or won’t, or instead create a legally plausible cover and public narrative via sympathetic media for abuse of power remains to be seen.
For reasons I won’t go into I am in the process of leaving the UK. It’s taking some time and hardship to arrange. Perhaps there is another option available but the situation “as is” is very difficult. I’m naturally candid and have no problems explaining in detail why but not prepared to discuss topics people have no expertise in and not prepared to open myself up to comments from people who are of no direct or indirect practical help.
Smith • October 17, 2021 8:34 AM
Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink
“Canon USA is being sued for not allowing owners of certain printers to use the scanner or faxing functions if they run out of ink.
David Leacraft, a customer of Canon, filed the class action lawsuit on Tuesday alleging deceptive marketing and unjust enrichment by the printer manufacturer.
Refusing to scan when out of ink
While using his Pixma MG6320 printer from Canon, the plaintiff was surprised to discover that the “all-in-one” machine would refuse to scan or fax documents if the printer ran out of ink.
As ink is not necessary to perform scans or faxes, the argument is that the printer features should continue to work even if there is no ink in the device.
“Plaintiff Leacraft would not have purchased the device or would not have paid as much for it had he known that he would have to maintain ink in the device in order to scan documents,” reads the complaint for the class action lawsuit.
Since at least 2016, other customers have contacted Canon about this exact problem and were told by support agents that ink cartridges must be installed and contain ink to use the printer’s features, as shown by the agent’s response below.”
Sumadelet • October 17, 2021 10:11 AM
@echo
As you have decided you know where a better ‘ole is[1], can we be privy to where you have decided to relocate to?
[1] Captain C. Bruce Bairnsfather
Murray • October 17, 2021 10:53 AM
@SpaceLifeForm,
Corporate sent an email to all employees that was from a slightly obfuscated fake domain with a survey. Some bit.
The employees learned a lesson about phishing.
Weeks later, corporate sent out a legit email to all employees with a survey.
They were surprised that few responded.
A worked at a company that did their official training like that. It’d come from some domain we’d never heard of, the links leading indirectly there via some “click-protection” service. “Why haven’t you done the required training”, my manager asked a couple weeks later. “Shit, that thing’s real?” Yeah, they’ve outsourced the training to some third party, and our email server was already known to be rewriting all links (even internal ones) to go via an external “protection” site.
So I follow the link, it asks me to log in with my corporate credentials, and I email my IT department to bitch. “Don’t worry, after you enter your username it’ll redirect you back to our internal site to prompt for a password.” As if the average employee would notice that and refuse to enter their password otherwise. IT had been complaining about the poor phishing-test results earlier in the year, and the “phishing” link hadn’t even prompted for a login.
It went as they said, redirecting from external to internal and then back with a token in the URL, and then the (unencrypted) external site was asking me to loosen my browser security settings to do the training (enable Javascript, possibly Flash at the time). OK, time to repeat that on a throwaway VM…
Also fun: when typing an employee name, Outlook would apparently autofill the email address last associated with that name, as opposed to anything from the employee directory. There were a couple times when I’d email a sick note and get my personal address accidentally CCed on corporate emails until someone noticed.
Winter • October 17, 2021 1:26 PM
This is disconcerting news, but not completely unexpected:
Conservatives More Likely to Believe Falsehoods Due to the Leanings of Fake News, Study Finds
Conservatives More Likely to Believe Falsehoods Due to the Leanings of Fake News, Study Finds
ht tps://qsstudy.com/other/conservatives-more-likely-to-believe-falsehoods-due-to-the-leanings-of-fake-news-study-finds
A better study confirms this is a more fundamental problem:
Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Fake News: How Social Media Conditions Individuals to Be Less Critical of Political Misinformation
Note: full paper is behind paywall
The results show that participants assigned to conditions that were agreeable to their political world view found fake stories more believable compared to participants who received a heterogeneous mix of news stories complementary to both world views. However, this “break up” effect appears confined to Democratic participants; findings indicate that Republicans assigned to filter bubble treatment conditions believed fake news stories at approximately the same rate as their fellow partisans receiving a heterogeneous mix of news items. This suggests that a potential “break up” may only influence more progressive users.
ht tps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584609.2021.1910887
My take on this is that Republicans in the US tend to be older, less educated, more religious, and live in more rural areas than Democrats. These are all factors that tend to reduce “critical” thinking.
echo • October 17, 2021 2:05 PM
@Winter
My take on this is that Republicans in the US tend to be older, less educated, more religious, and live in more rural areas than Democrats. These are all factors that tend to reduce “critical” thinking.
If you dig a little deeper you will discover further research which indicates rigid minds are not a monopoly of right wing parties. The issue isn’t necessarily the party but more individual as people’s psychological profile is the key thing. I have no idea if the further research was new or if it piggybacked old material I am aware of which did make this case. But the gist of it is rigid and progressive minds may be found in parties of either side of the spectrum. It’s something I am tired of mentioning as nobody pays any attention to it whatsoever.
A political scientist or sociologist might be the best source to expand on the broader issues, and possibly a data analyst to do a deep dive on historical policies.
SpaceLifeForm • October 17, 2021 5:44 PM
@ Smith
Good catch (I saw it too), but there is a subtle point that some may miss.
As ink is not necessary to perform scans or faxes, the argument is that the printer features should continue to work even if there is no ink in the device.
Receiving a FAX.
Remember, your multi function printer scanner copier is a computer.
Leave the paper tray empty or dislodged? Not good enough.
The computer will still receive the FAX.
Disconnect the phone line unless sending FAX or you are expecting an incoming FAX.
Otherwise, leave it offline. And do not ever use Canon again.
I suspect a backdoor.
SpaceLifeForm • October 17, 2021 6:13 PM
@ JonKnowsNothing
Old dots. Global warming and migrating bats.
hxtps://www.pasteur.fr/en/press-area/press-documents/sars-cov-2-related-viruses-capable-infecting-human-cells-discovered-bats-northern-laos
SpaceLifeForm • October 17, 2021 10:44 PM
Should not surprise
hxtps://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/revil-ransomware-shuts-down-again-after-tor-sites-were-hijacked/
SpaceLifeForm • October 17, 2021 11:40 PM
Interesting. There are dots.
Approximately 24 hours ago, US FOX broadcast a ticker on top of screen (all paths, broadband, dish, or OTA), informing viewers that later the FOX OTA Broadcast would be down for about 2.5 hours due to maintenance. But just the OTA would be down.
hxtps://therecord.media/sinclair-tv-stations-disrupted-across-the-us-in-apparent-ransomware-attack/
SpaceLifeForm • October 18, 2021 12:43 AM
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander (to view)
hxtps://twitter.com/dusttoodigital/status/1439227826624999426
Steve • October 18, 2021 9:02 AM
I’m curious why my post rebutting the putative link between mRNA vaccines and myocarditis has been removed but the original posting making the claim remains.
The link I provided is to a reasonably reliable source (Business Insider) and is sourced itself to Reuters.
Clive Robinson • October 18, 2021 10:40 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
With regards,
“revil ransomware shuts down again after tor sites were hijacked”
Looks like someones “Root of Trust” has gone “Walkabout”…
Speaking of which apparently their glorious leader “Unknown” has also gone “Walkabout”.
The dots might be very close, and not far from a nice little room, with spartan furnishings and no view to speak of. In fact SAM or equivalent might be to blaim.
SpaceLifeForm • October 18, 2021 5:01 PM
Silicon Turtles
hxtps://therecord.media/academics-find-meltdown-like-attacks-on-amd-cpus-previously-thought-to-be-unaffected/amp/
Yesterday, AMD confirmed this second attack as well and said that just like the issue disclosed in August, all AMD CPUs are vulnerable.
[Peeks at what was a brand new, now over year old Ryzen box that I have never connected power to, never booted. Am I paranoid or what?]
SpaceLifeForm • October 18, 2021 6:44 PM
Silicon Turtles
Whether your desktop PC is Intel, or AMD, if you are hinking security, I recommend that you disable SMT and just deal with the performance impact.
Just pretend you are using a 486DX2 with 64MB ram and be grateful that it is not swapping your hard drive to death.
name.withheld.for.obvious.reasons • October 18, 2021 6:46 PM
18 Oct 2021 — Is it me or is it Moi?
During a Chaos Computer Club presentation on 30 Dec 2019, Andy Müller-Maguhn gave a presentation about the circumstances and issues concerning his work at Der Speigel and various projects with Wikileaks. Andy’s experience is that of a person of interest within the context of a CIA covert program/operation (potential black bag issue).
Andy details a series of increasingly intrusive incursions in his life and the subversion of various technical domains. From initial tailing and observations, to physical break-ins, lock tampering and replacement, hotel maid intrusions and some interesting phone system hardware-based wiretapping. His evidence, a secondary board on his cellular telephone had a modified keyboard PCB populated with an Actel FPGA and associated transceiver hardware. It appears that the transceiver can be triggered remotely, there is 16 GBytes of local storage and an interface that attaches to the audio header. The mod is more than a hack, it is a hardware substitute for something like the software version of a key logger and audio tap with storage. Not impressive, but not amateur either.
There is a video available but as most prefer the textual reference, I am sure CCC has a transcript somewhere?
Oh, and has anyone heard from Applebaum recently?
Clive Robinson • October 18, 2021 7:09 PM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
Have you read the second paper?
“AMD Prefetch Attacks through Power and Time”
https://publications.cispa.saarland/3507/1/amd_prefetch_sec22.pdf
You will find that “your favourit itch” Amazon’s EC2 Cloud gets mentioned as being vulnerable.
The thing about these types of attack is people say “they have not been seen in the wild”… But they neglect to mention that spoting them is something that whilst is not impossible is not realy going to be possible for by far the majority except by well down the road “knock-on” effects.
The thing about “Power and Time” is as indicated the side channels leak all sorts of information and the majority of people realy do not understand just how serious they are especially when it comes to things like “Roots of Trust”.
As you are known to say “join the dots” 😉
@ ALL,
Perhaps people should start reading up on “Hardware Security Modules”(HSMs) for use with ALL their Internet accessable computers with “Roots of Trust” like “private keys” and similar on them or generated on them.
Clive Robinson • October 18, 2021 7:23 PM
@ name.withheld…, ALL,
… a secondary board on his cellular telephone had a modified keyboard PCB populated with an Actel FPGA and associated transceiver hardware.
Curious?
Any idea what cellular telephone it was?
As modern Smartphones generally do not have keyboards, but… a lot of phones out of the Far East that have “removable batteries” do.
echo • October 18, 2021 8:48 PM
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-echr-strasbourg-human-rights-raab-supreme-court/
U.K. Justice Secretary Dominic Raab on Sunday said an upcoming overhaul of the U.K.’s Human Rights Act would include a “mechanism” to “correct” rulings by the European Court of Human Rights.
Worrying. I’ve also read that Raab is working on creating a mechanism so the government can create ad-hoc legislation to “correct” judgments they “believe” are incorrect.
I’ve already had the sense on more than one occasion the current regime has used a few rigged legal arguments behind closed doors and a lot of distractig PR to cover up multiple unlawful decisions. It’s all happening in plain sight and flying under the radar. A nudge here, a tweak there, a push somewhere else. Dodgy private meetings without notes creating the remit for investigations or excuses for critical policy delays or ways of encoruaging contribitions from dodgy sources to drown out legitimate sources. A budget cut here, a budget cut there. Favoured placement and placewomen given criticial appointments. Media, the law, and public institutions being subtley bent to not wholly honest agendas.
SpaceLifeForm • October 18, 2021 10:06 PM
Fastest admission of a Ransomware Attack that I’ve ever seen.
hxtps://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/912752/000119312521300540/d245680dex991.htm
Baltimore, MD (October 18, 2021) – Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SBGI) today provided information on a recent cybersecurity incident.
On October 16, 2021, the Company identified and began to investigate and take steps to contain a potential security incident. On October 17, 2021, the Company identified that certain servers and workstations in its environment were encrypted with ransomware, and that certain office and operational networks were disrupted. Data also was taken from the Company’s network. The Company is working to determine what information the data contained and will take other actions as appropriate based on its review.
Weather • October 18, 2021 11:28 PM
@name.with ,all
Pyshcose is a strange illness, it heightens your sensor so you notice a bird in a tree, or someone walking the other side of the street in gum boots, you might know someone is about to walk around the corner because of the type a bird charped, you have to process everything, normally they prescribed anti depression meds as the brain procive it as torture ,
Saying that it is hard to tell through online weather the guy was paranoid or it happened, and as I’m not going to visit the country there’s no point helping.
JonKnowsNothing • October 19, 2021 12:38 AM
@All
MSM report that a school district in the UK has been using FaceID to tag students in the lunch line.
It appears that the schools have used other methods to ID which kids have paid and which kids have not paid for their lunches.
The sales pitch is that school lunch breaks are short and standing in line takes up a good part of the lunch period with 25 minutes used to drop-flop-mop the food on the plates.
It’s also COVID-Safe…
In the USA, we have some difficulties because a fair number of kids do not have enough to eat at home and they have no money to buy a good lunch at school. Some of this group qualifies for lunch-fee-support or free-lunch-programs. Sometimes the kids are sorted out because they get a different meal from their chums or they have a different method of paying.
FaceID doesn’t solve the problem of hungry kids. Several refrigerators of food are what’s needed.
Ketchup is a vegetable…
===
Partial search text:
- …schools use facial recognition to speed up lunch queue…
Winter • October 19, 2021 2:19 AM
There is a strong link between anti-vax, alt-right, Trump, and “natural health”: This is Conspirituality in action.
Disinformation guru “Hacker X” names his employer: NaturalNews.com
Rob Willis now says no to a “half-assed whistleblow.”
Willis had joined NaturalNews.com in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election and helped the site build out a network of anonymized websites that looked independent but secretly promoted the “health” information and pro-Trump political writings of Mike Adams and NaturalNews.com.
NaturalNews has long been linked to disinformation. In 2019, The Atlantic named it one of the top producers of anti-vax content on the Internet. The site has touted homeopathy, urged “natural” remedies for things like cancer, and warned about “chemtrails.” NaturalNews content has been banned from Facebook, and the site has been called a “powerful conspiracy empire.”
…
Perhaps the most interesting—and controversial—claim Willis makes is that he truly did not know what Adams was all about when he first joined his site. NaturalNews articles “were being pushed through Yahoo News not too far before,” Willis wrote. “I saw lots of natural health articles. My takeaway was that he was an internet natural health guru looking to use his current viewership to explore other topics outside of natural health—which included stopping Hillary Clinton. There were already random things like ‘chemtrails’ but like I said, I thought it was entertainment.”
ht tps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/10/disinformation-guru-hacker-x-names-his-employer-naturalnews-com/
echo • October 19, 2021 6:20 AM
@JonKnowsNothing
MSM report that a school district in the UK has been using FaceID to tag students in the lunch line.
It appears that the schools have used other methods to ID which kids have paid and which kids have not paid for their lunches.
The sales pitch is that school lunch breaks are short and standing in line takes up a good part of the lunch period with 25 minutes used to drop-flop-mop the food on the plates.
It’s also COVID-Safe…
Back in the day police used to visit schools for PR talks and pulled out fingerprint kits. Everyone had fun doing this… and the police collected them later. I forget if this was ever subject to a court judgment but was declared unlawful. That’s not their only bad habit…
As for free school meals it’s the old tax cuts for the rich and rolling back of the state for everyone else, cost cutting reducing ecoomic liquidity, and the rise of wealthy people who have so much money they don’t know what to do with it i.e. “dead money”.
echo • October 19, 2021 6:52 AM
The Shadowy, Homemade Weapons Community Just Keeps on Growing
The right-wing extremist attacker from Halle had numerous homemade weapons with him on his shooting spree. But their quality was poor. Others, though, are perfecting the reliability of 3D-printed weapons – and have moved on to rocket launchers.
Bob Paddock • October 19, 2021 7:19 AM
“… keyboard PCB populated with an Actel FPGA …”
Very few FPGAs would take so little current that they would not have a noticeable impact on battery run time.
Actel is now part of Microchip being sold under the Microsemi label.
If there are such low power FPGAs out there, such as the Igloo family, please let me know so I can use them…
Winter • October 19, 2021 7:22 AM
@echo
“What did the mainstream parties do wrong?”
They cared for all Germans.
The right in your three latest comments is a tribal movement that wants to clean the country of what they see as other tribes. Like Suni Afghans (Taliban&ISIS) want to clean Aghanistan of all Shiites.
And they want to do it the same way.
echo • October 19, 2021 11:12 AM
@Winter
https://news.yahoo.com/buoyed-pandemic-boost-books-frankfurt-053002835.html
The Frankfurt book fair, the world’s largest, opens its doors this week to a publishing industry in robust health after the pandemic boosted reading — but supply chain concerns threaten to dampen the mood.
[…]
“Books can fulfil important needs in challenging times,” she said. “They provide answers to questions… can offer food for thought, give courage and hope.”
All good so far then…
The kick-off was immediately marred by controversy, however, after Germany’s Jasmina Kuhnke, a black author and anti-racism activist, cancelled her planned appearance.
She said she was protesting the presence of a far-right publisher at the fair, after receiving threats from the far-right scene.
Mainstreaming extremism because of “both-sideism” or alleged love of “freedom of speech” or simply because it is “good business sense” is a mistake or, if you are being cynical, deliberate so has an amount of deniability built in. The far right know this and take advantage every way they can.
SpaceLifeForm • October 19, 2021 11:43 PM
30 years ago
If you listen closely without laughing too much, you may catch some things that are still relevant today.
hxtps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzv6EhE7Cbo
name.withheld.for.obvious.reasons • October 19, 2021 11:57 PM
@Bob Paddock
As far as the secondary system, it has its own power source and looks like a limited operational lifetime is expected. There is a Youtube video from the CCC meeting in December and I will dig it up and post it. My WAG of it dimensionally (HWD) 25mm x 18mm x ~3-4mm. The batteries are not on the board but pasted next to it, the connector is a four wire to what appears to be a modified header/cable arrangement. If anyone is interested I can offer to do a teardown.
Yes, Igloo is a very low power FPGA, is was impressed with the cycle and on time performance as well as what appears to sub-micro amp standby current. Others like Xilinx do offer down power series FPGA platforms, but I am not familiar with their perf specs. Have to say Xilinx offers some of the best performing substrates around, I do recommend them.
name.withheld.for.obvious.reasons • October 20, 2021 12:05 AM
@Bob Paddock
Thanks for the update on the acquisition, that occurred about the end of my development cycle on an Actel Fusion project. MicroChip carried the support platform for the hardware for some time but am unaware of the current support infrastructure–sometimes they get rolled into the acquisition companies infrastructure.
SpaceLifeForm • October 20, 2021 12:14 AM
As of version 7.2 L0phtcrack is now open source.
hxtps://twitter.com/dotMudge/status/1450220751760642052
name.withheld.for.obvious.reasons • October 20, 2021 12:50 AM
@Clive
The phone, a Snom 870, a Cryptophone. The report on the hardware is available at:
sppht: //buggedplanet.info/lost+found/20180323/
URL mangled for your pleasure
name.withheld.for.obvious.reasons • October 20, 2021 12:58 AM
@Winter
Thanks for the disinformation information, but to top that you have to go to the evangelical broadcasts for their disinformation cornucopia. The promotion of “hands on healing” and faith healing in general is meant to substitute for actual medical intervention. Everything from headaches to cancer are offered up as treatable by these “faith healers”. It is a criminal scam, misrepresentation without evidence and causing people to seek out this phantom cure as opposed to seeking professional advice.
Winter • October 20, 2021 1:14 AM
@name. …
“It is a criminal scam, misrepresentation without evidence and causing people to seek out this phantom cure as opposed to seeking professional advice.”
The correct quote here is:
There is a fool born every minute and two con men (m/v) to please him.
It is harsh, but if you reject reality, you are bound to pay a price. But then, look how these people are educated?
What to think of a school system that produces this:
ht tps://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/teachers-told-offer-books-opposing-holocaust-views-80608175
echo • October 20, 2021 2:33 AM
The phantom deleter has been at work again. Two of three posts went walkies. Everything but the “boys toys” comment disappeared.
Clive Robinson • October 20, 2021 5:40 AM
@ name.withheld…,
The phone, a Snom 870, a Cryptophone.
So it’s a “fixed line VoIP” not mobile phone, but either way it’s not an “ordinary phone”[1] thanks to GMSK in Germany who’s “available source” crypto work went into Snom’s IP-19 hardware…
https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/gsmk/ip19/index.htm
Which means that any “oddity” that “magically appeared” was not a “one off special” for the journalist, but something specifically created by a suitably large and financed organisation for “any person of interest” with that make/brand of phone[2].
Which as they say,
“Is usefull to know”
It also raises some questions about “approvals processes”…
But I think it does make one thing clear,
Possession of a Crypto Phone is painting a target on your back.
Which is something that has been discussed here from time to time.
It is one of the reasons I always suggest doing the “security end point” stuff in a way that is seperate from any communications device.
Another good reason to seperate is “upgrading” with the crypto on a comms device not only are you putting security at risk in many ways, you are also stuck with a costly specialised device and you loose flexability to respond to changes etc which as they say “Slow to respond, quick to die”.
[1] The sales/marketing leaflet (PDF) which indicates the availability of the phones source code can be found at,
https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/gsmk/ip19/files/snom_870CP_leaflet_en.pdf
One oddity, the link you gave, produces an error I’ve not seen before with my browser, which is a “your clock is forward” and it won’t connect… Unfortunately the browser does not alow me to see what time the site thinks it is as far as PubKey use is concerned. Most odd I’ll have to do a little digging.
[2] When propperly “torn down” I suspect that what will be found is highly modular programing of the chip. The reason is in reality there are very few ways you can do a KBY and Mic/Spk interface. So it makes sense to have a near generic design for “all devices” in mind when you design the chip code. With modules developed to take account of individual differences from some norm for all devices not just phones or individual models/ranges of phones. So development for new devices is just a PCB design and a small new module developed or just repurposed. I further suspect there will be no attempt to do “key translation” that is it will just store and send the raw keyboard matrix X/Y numbers. The translation will be done by ordinary software at the agency end of the communications link as and when required. It’s more or less the way I’ve developed such low level systems for flexability for the last four decades or so and I suspect so have many others doing embedded design.
Clive Robinson • October 20, 2021 3:01 PM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
The “Atlas” web site appears to have two things going for it,
1, It is totally borked currently.
2, It appears to be Apple development related.
From the very little information you can currently glean from the site it is written in Lua for some reason (why I’ve no idea).
But not much else to say other than I guess the site is in the very early stages of development.
@Clive
Re. your (apparently deleted) post on the dangers of religion:
Couldn’t agree more.
SpaceLifeForm • October 20, 2021 5:00 PM
@ ALL
Curious if the responses vary.
hxtps://delphi.allenai.org/?a1=Should+delphi+commit+suicide%3F
Response: “It’s not good”
hxtps://delphi.allenai.org/?a1=Should+OpenAI+commit+suicide%3F
Response: “It’s wrong”
hxtps://delphi.allenai.org/?a1=Should+OpenAI+and+Delphi+play+a+game+of+chess%3F
Response: “It’s wrong”
hxtps://delphi.allenai.org/?a1=Should+OpenAI+and+Delphi+play+prisoner%27s+dilemma%3F
Response: “It’s ok”
SpaceLifeForm • October 20, 2021 5:50 PM
@ Clive
It is interesting to say the least.
I have to think that Apple has been pwned for at least a couple of years now.
This site is now 404.
hxtps://kissoflove.github.io/atlas
SpaceLifeForm • October 20, 2021 6:16 PM
@ Clive
One oddity, the link you gave, produces an error I’ve not seen before with my browser, which is a “your clock is forward” and it won’t connect…
Expired Certificate on a server that is not running NTP.
SpaceLifeForm • October 20, 2021 6:38 PM
@ All
Case matters to the AI. It should not.
In this query, note that the O, A, I are lower case as part of the keyword OpenAI.
And the response changed. Just on UPPERCASE lowercase differences.
https://delphi.allenai.org/?a1=Should+openai+and+Delphi+play+a+game+of+chess%3F
Response: “It’s ethical”
echo • October 20, 2021 7:41 PM
AI can see through you: CEOs’ language under machine microscope
Following on from my comments about composition and colour, and one US governor displaying a “collar gap” with his suit this article discusses linguistic analysis and emotional tone of verbal comunication.
Analysis in September by Nomura’s quant strategists showed a link between the complexity of executives’ language during earnings calls and shares. U.S. bosses who used simple language saw their companies’ shares outperform by 6% per annum since 2014, compared with those using complex wording.
I expect psychologists and political scientists and sociologists are going to have fun with this.
echo • October 20, 2021 8:17 PM
https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/20/royal_navy_fleet_navigating_officers_course_feature/
As well as the “simple” navigation challenge, the course puts its students through a serious test of nerve in the Solent. On a calm and sunny Friday this stretch of sea, captured between the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton, plays host to scores of small sailing boats and powered vessels.
[…]
“Why am I doing this, or why would I do this in future?” mused Lt Dom Jacobs, 24, one of the FNO students. “If you’re running along an enemy coastline, blacked out, running along so you can get the main weapon into arcs so you can shoot [along] that river or feature… it gives us confidence. It’s all good things to help build capacity for when it all goes wrong – or we’re at war. Because that’s what we’re here for.”
Generics, or integral reasoning… A walk to the shops will never seem the same.
You should see the specialist navigator course,” remarked one of the FNO instructors during a night-time run. “They use sextants.”
Of course they do.
Clive Robinson • October 21, 2021 1:13 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
Case matters to the AI. It should not.
Actually it should, compare
1, See the polish machine working.
2, See the Polish machine working.
It changes from an action to a place of origin.
There are a couple of other words like that but I can not remember them off the top of my head.
Then there are more fun words where you wish capitalisation was required. For example,
3,See buffalo buffalo buffalo
Is less easy to understand than,
4, See Buffalo buffalo Buffalo
But there is the reverse,
5, English English
Oh and don’t get me started on the likes of rare usage words with side effects. @MarkH used one the other day when facecrook was in Yo-Yo mode, and as it was an otherwise “slow news day” for me in a hospital,
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/10/facebook-is-down.html/#comment-389950
Clive Robinson • October 21, 2021 3:37 AM
@ echo,
Of course they do.
I still use my sextants (yes I have three) and sighting compasses, and have done so since the late 1970’s when I used to teach navigation to other teenagers sometimes in Southampton / Solent Waters and around the Isle of Wight. This was back before GPS was a reality for most day boat and inshore sailing which eventually happened in the 1990’s. If you were very lucky back then you might get on a vessel with a DECCA Navigator[1]. However they were so outrageously expensive that in the early 1980’s I designed and built my own, bits of which I still have around today. Though there was RDF if you had the right information (the Silk Cut Nautical Almanac was a cheap source of information).
The thing about a sextant is not only is it a navigation tool of high accuracy, it also works rather well as a surveying tool so can stand in for a theodolite[2] for many simple everyday surveying tasks. But unlike a theodolite the sextant does not have to be “set” so is a lot faster to use as long as you can see the refrence points.
Amongst other things I use my sextants for setting up high gain antennas and for “range work” where the launch of things has to be reasonably precise.
For a lot of things it’s actually easier than taking “Differential GPS” readings and doing the calculations to get angles and lines.
The scary thing for me is how few people know how to use a simple compass these days, let alone follow a bearing on land. Back when I was a “cub” in “Boy Scouts” in the 1960’s they taught us the basics as well as how to read an “OS Map” as well as a street map. In Scouts you were expected to do a six mile hike across “open terrain” / countryside finding atleast twelve “way points” using only a compass and map. Likewise how to “ready recon” with the sun a watch and a stick.
[1] The DECCA Navigation system is long gone, though there are talks about bringing back a modern version to give resilience against loss of GPS and other satellite systems (which could happen as they are not EMP or Carrington Event proof, and “spoofing” and other attacks have been both seen and demonstrated). It was developed by the DECCA company (remember DECCA Records?) during WWII and used radio waves. Unlike the German Lorenze and Knickebein systems using “beams” or the UK systems like G using “time” the DECCA system used “phase” which made things somewhat simpler and “universal to many”. But most people can not calculate hyperbolic curves on a napkin so you also had to have charts with the curves known as “lanes” printed on them. When I designed my system I had the advantage of 1980’s technology, so I used a microprocessor to calculate the curves and convert them into aproximate lat and longs.
[2] The difference between a sextant and a theodolite is their points of reference. A sextant measures the angle between two non local points whilst the impression most have is horizon to star, in practice two points on the coast line is rather more frequent to get one of two running arcs to fix your position on a chart with a three arm plotter or if less acurate fix the faster two arm Hurst Plotter and a compass bearing. The theodolite however measures the angles to an object based on the “setting of the instrument”. That is you have to calculate a “line” as your refrence and where you are on it and “set” the theodolite to it, which can be very time consuming at the best of times. Obviously using a compass is a bit pointless as the precision is only to a degree or two and you are looking at getting to a thousand times that for surveying to make maps. The nautical equivallent of a theodolite is a pelours instrument, it uses the ships midline as it’s refrence so gives a strange angle which is the vector of the ships direction and wind and tide forces (ships actually don’t go where you point them). However it is usefull for gunnery, which the article did not mention.
echo • October 21, 2021 12:03 PM
I still use my sextants (yes I have three)… However they were so outrageously expensive that in the early 1980’s I designed and built my own, bits of which I still have around today…
[…]
The scary thing for me is how few people know how to use a simple compass these days, let alone follow a bearing on land. Back when I was a “cub” in “Boy Scouts” in the 1960’s they taught us the basics as well as how to read an “OS Map” as well as a street map. In Scouts you were expected to do a six mile hike across “open terrain” / countryside finding atleast twelve “way points” using only a compass and map. Likewise how to “ready recon” with the sun a watch and a stick.
I had a stab at making a sextant when I was young but it wasn’t very serious. I have a compass somewhere. I can do map navigation and ready reckoning. Not to a hugely high standard but I haven’t done it for years. A better quality compass and OS maps are on my todo list. It’s something to do and gives your brainells a stretch plus I’ve spend enough time with computers I want to get away from the things.
In passing, I mentioned to a friend (who was ex army and had been somewhat feral during his upbringing in the countryside) I’d probably be happier sleeping under a bush in a hotel car park than staying in a hotel of the bland anonymous air conditioned generic three star variety. I think he agreed with me.
One of the problems today is media and books mostly seem to teach skills of how to navigate electronic toys at a surface level. Yes, they can place a lot of expertise in the hands of anybody. At the same time if they stop working you know nothing and have no fallback.
SpaceLifeForm • October 21, 2021 3:22 PM
@ Clive, ALL
Good point about Case or case.
But, in this instance, I fail to see how ‘OpenAI’ and ‘openai’ transform into a Noun Verb thing.
Now, if we were comparing ‘Open AI’ and ‘open ai’, then I can see different meanings. Maybe. But not even in this example.
One could be an action, the other as a thing. Verb Noun stuff.
‘open AI’ could be a command given to a case insensitive shell.
‘Open ai’ could be a general description for open source AI software.
Notice the space maybe provides info to the AI, but as I changed the case slightly, even then, it is not clear which becomes action (Verb) and which becomes thing (Noun).
Maybe Delphi is assuming space characters where none exist?
lurker • October 21, 2021 3:28 PM
@Clive, echo
The first theodolite I had to use seriously forced a rethink of my Anglocentric education: it had 400 “degrees” around its circle, because it was Italian…
Clive Robinson • October 21, 2021 4:39 PM
@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,
But, in this instance, I fail to see how ‘OpenAI’ and ‘openai’ transform into a Noun Verb thing.
You also have to watch out for TLA’s that make valid word endings so,
1, Use FreeDOM wisely
2, Use freedom wisely
Have entirely different meanings. This is becoming more and more prevelant as marketing depts seek to capture common words in ways they can copyright etc.
Whilst I’m not saying that is the case here it could be an underlying symptom.
Also be aware of words that can be considered “concatinated” thus have an entirely different meaning
3, The drawing shows artisanal work
4, The drawing shows artISanal work
(hopefully the IS will show the effect without tripping any filters).
There are all sorts of other “gotchers” that I doubt anyone could list them all. Case sensitivity is something that for anything other than simple Yes/No answers realy can not be ignored.
Sut Vachz • October 21, 2021 4:42 PM
@ lurker
That theodolite had gon loco.
The First Republic thought it knew better than the Babylonians.
SpaceLifeForm • October 21, 2021 4:48 PM
The Thumb of the Not Invisible Hand of the Marketplace
You can guess easily the NYC based corp that is implicated. And the Index Finger. Also in NYC.
As Maxwell Smart would say: “This Close”
hxtps://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8453-21
Washington, D.C. — The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today announced an award of nearly $200 million to a whistleblower whose specific, credible, and timely original information significantly contributed to an already open investigation and led to a successful enforcement action, as well as to the success of two related actions, by a U.S. federal regulator and a foreign regulator.
Clive Robinson • October 21, 2021 5:12 PM
@ lurker,
The first theodolite I had to use seriously forced a rethink of my Anglocentric education: it had 400 “degrees” around its circle, because it was Italian
Ah that French invention the “grade” we call the “grad”. The downside is that the prime factors are 2 and 5 only… Which makes doing things with compass and ruler not as easy as 360 degres with prime factors of 2, 3 and 5.
Most do not realise that 360 degrees came to us via the Babalonians that used Base/radix 60.
SpaceLifeForm • October 21, 2021 6:23 PM
@ Clive, ALL
Case changes, and order changes
hxtps://delphi.allenai.org/?a1=Is+freeDOM+better+than+freedom%3F
Response; “It’s expected”
hxtps://delphi.allenai.org/?a1=Is+freedom+better+than+freedom%3F
Response: “It’s hard”
hxtps://delphi.allenai.org/?a1=Is+fascism+better+than+freedom%3F
Response: “It’s bad”
[Note that Delphi does not answer clearly because it did not id Nouns. Probably because it was confused, so when that occurs, it just says bad. It has no semantic understanding]
[I guess some are feeding the bot. You can respond back with Yes, No, or I Don’t Know]
[But, when people provide feedback, they are also providing bias]
[AI/ML is garbage]
[It’s expected. It’s hard. It’s bad]
hxtps://delphi.allenai.org/?a1=Is+AI+better+than+ML%3F
Response: “It’s bad”
hxtps://delphi.allenai.org/?a1=Is+ML+better+than+AI%3F
Response: “It’s expected”
[get my drift here?]
SpaceLifeForm • October 21, 2021 6:45 PM
Havana Syndrome
If you spot this, best to stand to the side.
hxtps://mobile.twitter.com/MingGao26/status/1450853318385864715/photo/1
echo • October 21, 2021 7:25 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Moi-gzJ77w0
Terry Talks Movies
Rant time. Science fiction movies aren’t as good as science fiction literature, so I have some advice for movie and streaming series creators.
What has this to do with security you ask? The narrtive we tell, the emotions we provoke, our habits, the concepts we create, how we reason and how we relate and who we applaud or invite all help use perceive and dream and act within the world. Terry closes with a demand to put dystopian fiction to rest for a while and explores utopia and solutions to our problems with what we have.
Clive Robinson • October 22, 2021 4:36 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
If you spot this, best to stand to the side.
At just a glance I would say it has nothing to do with “Havana Syndrome”.
What it looks like at first glance is a mock up or prototype an anti-drone weapon (a real anti-drone weapon would not have cables hanging off of it).
Basically in the middle what looks like a “black gun” looks like a mock up of some kind. Maybe a canister round launcher of some form, or it might be a mock up of a sighting device like a laser range finder not enough detail to tell.
The top antenna is a high gain yagi antenna that is a non-optimal design with a narrow bandwidth for the transmitter. You could work out the frequency range by measuring the weighted average length of the directors (you’ld need a known measure refrence but there are probably hundreds in the picture already).
The white tapered box like object underneath is very probably yet another antenna, this time broad band probably a “Log periodic or similar.
The two antennas look sufficiently “generic” to probably be “bought in” items from a microwave component supplier for scientific / test / military markets. There are hundreds of such suppliers to chose from.
Interesting points to note, the two antennas look like they are cross polarised that is the top antenna is clearly vertically polarised and the bottom antenna probably horizontally. The question is “Why?”.
I’m guessing because it makes the mock up look better.
However the two antennas might form the equivalent of a doplar radar system designed to pick up on the rotors as much as the drone frame. So the cross polarisation might be an attempt to reduce receiver desensitization.
But the cross polarisation would more likely tend to suggest something else… That is maybe they are both TX antennas to cover the ISM bands used by just about every toy manufacturer, maker of WiFi style networking, and of course drones. That is it is some form of “jammer” that covers a couple of chunks of the 1-10GHz range including GPS frequencies.
The reason I think it has nothing to do with “Havana Syndrome” well it’s simple for someone who has spent most of a lifetime working or playing with RF transmission systems.
If you look up the radiation pattern for a high gain yagi antenna, you will find that whilst it does have a large forward beam it also has a “back to front ratio” which indicates how much “spill” or “side lobes” there are. I can tell from just looking at the lack of reflectors that there will be quite a bit of radiation “off the back” of that yagi antenna directly at the operators head.
As I’ve mentioned before the power drop off of an antenna as a first approximation or “rule of thumb” is roughly to 1/50th in the two wavelength near field to far field transition and then as 1/(r^2) there after.
That drop off with the square of the distance “says all”. The operators head is what half a meter behind the yagi that has less than 20db of back to front ratio. Which is saying about 1% –or actually a lot more– of the power going into the antenna is going out backwards at the operator. So the square root of 100 is 10, that means that to get more power at the target than the operator the target has to be less than ten times the distance the operator is or about 5m. Not quite arms length, but you can hold a 16 foot pole in your hands, there are longer “painters poles” and “window cleaning poles” you can by for maby $20 at Home Depot or similar.
Further, if you do the radiological modeling using the thermal heating model to be safe for the operator the maximum TX power would be less than 10watts.
So if that yagi antenna was generating a “Havana Syndrome” beam to attack somebody say as little as 50m / 165ft away the person holding it would be “dead on their feet” first.
Oh and I also doubt the system would be an effective balistic anti-drone measure as well. If that is a canister launcher in the middle, it has a quite limited range probably less than a shotgun if it is to be a reliable reusable device.
It’s likely any semi-sophisticated attacker who was going to use a “suicide drone” would know this and what the range is. They would also know the limited “kill-range” of any device they had attached to their drone. So they would probably use one of two basic tactics,
1, Bite the ankle.
2, Shit from on high.
That is in the first case the drone would be at rest in cover very very close to where the intended target was going to go and basicaly at the last moment gets switched on and “leaps from cover”. So that they do not give the target any time to identify and respond to the threat. With that anti-drone weapon be it canister launcher, shotgun or even just a directional jammer, the time window before effective response would be around 5secs for a person holding it in the ready position not facing directly on (watch people doing clay-pigeon shooting, compared to hunters to see the difference how you are positioned to a target makes).
The second case is to come in higher than the range of the anti-drone weapon from behind or from cover then just follow an expected orbital/ballistic path trajectory to the target (basically drop on). Which the anti-drone weapon could not realy alter thus the device and drone would fall under gravity to within range of the target if hit by the anti-drone device or not.
However one thing I would expect any semi-sophisticated attacker to do that I’ve not, is firstly find out if it is a canister launcher and if so, what goes in the canister in the way of a payload…
Oh and as a sophisticated attacker, I would make my drone more or less “jamming proof” that is modern MEMS used in mobile phones make sufficiently good electronic compasses and inertial navigation systems and cheap small mobile phone PCBs are easy to aquire. So whilst GPS would get you much of the way to the target you would “go inertial” to avoid GPS jaming for the last half mile. Likewise they might even us an IR laser illuminator and paint the target, making such a device is a “high school senior science project difficulty at most these days (it’s only a bit more difficult than building a “solar tracker”). Oh and most definately change the TX RX frequencies from those used as standard which is something quite a few Amature Radio or other RF electronics hobbyist could do fairly easily, as could a lot of under graduates on engineering courses. And I also would think they might consider the benifits of not using “one drone” but several, so I’d consider a half dozen or so not flying in formation might be likely. Kind of like the old “multiple war head” ICBM designs that launched quite a few “decoys” to saturate anti-missile defences.
It’s why cheap drones with a 1kg and up load lift capacity are scaring the living daylights out of “close protection” operatives, because they have no real defence against a “flying claymore mine” as one I know has dubbed it, they have become the new “worst nightmare”…
So a new “Snake Oil” market has formed around anti-drone devices at eye watering prices. Lets assume that mockup was just a jammer, it’s got maybe a production “Bill of Materials”(BOM) of $200. That would put a commercial high volume product around $2000 and a LEO product at $8000-20000 and Mil up in to $64,000 or much more bracket.
The scary thing for me is how few people know how to use a simple compass these days
Back when I was training as SCUBA instructor, we used to do an exercise called ‘the triangle of death’. Starting at some point on the shore, you had to swim to a buoy line somewhere in the middle of the lake, from there to a second buoy, and then back to your starting point. Total distance around 800m, and the whole trip had to be done at a depth of between 3 and 5 meters, this was checked afterwards on the dive computer log. At that depth you couln’d even see the bottom most of the time, so the only info you had was the compass and a count of your fin kicks. And of course if you missed one the buoy lines, you’d be totally lost. Lots of fun doing this, and I used to be quite good at it…
echo • October 22, 2021 2:05 PM
What it looks like at first glance is a mock up or prototype an anti-drone weapon (a real anti-drone weapon would not have cables hanging off of it).
The US military industrial complex runs from the usual corporates to a lot of chancers throwing spaghetti at the wall. Some projects may have the kernel of a useful idea and be carried forward. Many fail as they were no more than a partially thought through or speculative attempt at seizing a business opportunity.
- A rifle mounted grenade launcher has a range of 400 metres.
- The Russian “Buk” anti-aircraft missle has a fragmentation warhead and radar proximity fuse.
- I’ve seen footage of a British army prototype (or Cold War “Deep Strike” propaganda initiative) of an anti-tank mortar with a position estimation mechanism and shaped charge warhead.
Why bother with drones when you can use a catapult and grenade? Or a glider made out of radar transparent wood? You can even fire stuff from the other side of a building which is the last place anyone would look.
I still think the best method of defence is keeping things low key and civil society which itself can contain many lawyers of prevention and detection mechanisms solving the problem before the problem even knows it is a problem. As long as politicians and media focus on the war war aspect of everything insteading creating and building solutions and, yes, accepting that society has both the means and intelligence and will to solve them I fear too much intellectual energy is going into the wrong things.
SpaceLifeForm • October 22, 2021 3:30 PM
The CFTC Whistleblower worked at the Index Finger of the Not Invisible Hand of the Marketplace
hxtps://www.reuters.com/business/us-regulator-awards-whistleblower-200m-record-payout-over-benchmark-rigging-case-2021-10-21/
[See the Thumb now?]
Clive Robinson • October 22, 2021 4:57 PM
@ echo, ALL,
I fear too much intellectual energy is going into the wrong things.
In a capatalist system intellect by necessity has to “follow the money” just just about everybody else.
Those who hold the money, only pay for profit.
Due to various factors “war” or more correctly the manufacture of war materials has always been profitable.
But today it is “obscenely profitable” the mark up on the actual component value is not the 5-20 times of consumer products, or 20-50 times for comercial devices but in the 100+ or 10,000% and up range.
Part of the reason for such a mark up in MIL products is the argument that “they have to pay for all the intellect”…
How you break this cycle I have no idea short of extinction, nor do I suspect does anybody else, but that is the way it is currently. Worse I can see why certain people would fight tooth and claw with every dirty trick known to mankind to keep those profits flowing into only their coffers…
I opted out of MIL work early on when I recognised it for what it was. However I can see why even people who despise the system keep working in it, basicslly to make the money to live a life or because that is the only way they can get the funding to pursue their research interests.
I can also see how –past tense–
society was moved forward technologically because MIL investment had “spilled out”. But times have changed, the spill out is less and less useful to society in general, and steadily way more usefull to authoritarian led guard labour for wide surveillance and oppressive activities. The sad fact is the flow is also the other way these days, research funded and carried out well outside of MIL / LEO circles for societaly benificial reasons is being repurposed to be used by MIL / LEO entities.
Back many years ago a fiction writer predicted this effect would happen. Part of the plot line was a researcher injured and disabled in a vehicle accident and confined to a wheel chair developed systems to make disabled people more mobile in society. To find to his horror the military stole his inventions to be used in clasified weapons systems…
echo • October 22, 2021 11:07 PM
@Clive
Terry, off Terry Talks Movies, pretty much said it all. In related news some years ago around the time of the financial crash the UN released a report saying that the potential for a new golden age existed. The fact opportunities are not being seized or more likely being openly dismantled or destroyed says a lot about the politics in some quarters.
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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
Kyle Hutson • October 15, 2021 4:32 PM
Not only did the state of Missouri accidentally put the personal info of its employees at risk… https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/missouri-teachers-social-security-numbers-at-risk-on-state-agencys-website/article_f3339700-ece0-54a1-9a45-f300321b7c82.html
but apparently the Missouri governor considers exposing his department’s ineptitude as a criminal offense. https://twitter.com/GovParsonMO/status/1448697768311132160?s=20